Zombiestuck- Not Okay
by IrisLovegood413
Summary: They thought Sburb was as bad as it could get. They thought that, after everything they had gone through, they would be prepared for almost anything. That their minds would be prepared. They were so wrong. Ships: A lot of DirkJake, some Davekat and AraSol, a little RoseMary Triggers: Death, ANGST, blood, violence Will be updated almost every other day until finished
1. Chapter 1

" _Heroes aren't always the ones who win. They're the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don't give up. That's what makes them heroes" -Cassandra Clare_

 **Jake**

My eyes snapped open and were quickly blinded by a light, not bright enough to actually hurt me, but bright enough to startle me right after having my eyes shut for hours. I instinctively squeezed them shut and took a second to process what was going on.

 _It's morning_ , I thought with a sigh. I rolled over to grab my glasses and check the clock, just like I did every morning. But that's not what happened. Instead I fell off the bed. _What the heck?_ My nightstand was usually right there… wait…

I opened my eyes and stood up to see that I was in fact not in my bedroom. Now I was thoroughly confused. _Where am I?_

I could just barely make out an unfamiliar room lit up by a set of flickering overhead lights and a big window streaming in afternoon sun. There were three more empty but clearly used beds and a table across the room, with a halfway opened door in the corner leading into a hallway I couldn't see.

Suddenly I remembered something. _Sburb._

The thought only confused me more. What happened to the game? Where was I? How did I fall asleep? How did I get here? Where were my glasses? What was going on?!

I looked down. I was wearing tan shorts, white sneakers and a pale yellow shirt with the Hope symbol on it. _I don't even own this._

Suddenly I heard footsteps. I panicked and ducked behind the bed, because apparently in the moment I had decided that would actually be helpful in the event that there was some psychopathic killer after me. The silence of me holding my breath in fear was broken by the sound of the door creaking open, followed by a thankfully familiar voice.

"Jake?"

I recognized it instantly and stood up to see the blurred figure of Dirk leaning against the doorframe, in black jeans and a heart symbol t-shirt. The sight of him calmed me down a little and slowed the whirlwind of thoughts racing through my head. At least I wasn't the only one in this place, whatever it was.

"You're awake", he said.

"Yeah, I… where are we?" I asked, squinting as I looked around the room. He walked over to the table and handed me my glasses, which just made me feel silly for not having found them myself.

"I don't really know", he shrugged.

I put on my glasses and turned to the window to see if I could recognize anything now.

"You might not want to-" he started, but I had already looked down at the street below. I screamed and staggered back. Crowded in the streets were sickly-looking humanoid figures, covered in gashes and blood. I turned back to Dirk, my heart racing and my mind already filling to the brim with all sorts of horrifying explanations for what I had seen.

"Are those…" I trailed off. He nodded.

 _Zombies._

I sat down on the bed, struggling to take in the situation. He grabbed a piece of paper off the table and sat next to me.

"I woke up and it was just you and me. It was only a couple hours ago, but you weren't waking up for some reason so I decided to walk around the place and see what it was. I think it's some kind of research facility. There's a kitchen, a lab, and a couple rooms full of weapons, but I have no idea how we got here."

"W… what about the other beds?" I asked.

"Roxy and Jane I think. They're gone, but they left this", he said, handing me a note written in Roxy's barely legible loopy handwriting:

 _Guys-_

 _So sorry me and Jane had to leave. It's been weeks, and we weren't sure if you were going to wake up at all. If you do, well, you've probably looked out the window already, so… yeah that happened. We're just as clueless about all of this as you guys probably are. This place has a bunch of stuff though. You know, food and weapons and stuff. We tried not to use too much so you guys would have it. I left a map and circled where me and Jane are planning on going. It should be an abandoned house. We'll stay there for a while since we don't really know where else to go. I hope we see you there!_

 _-Roxy_

 _Well at least they've got a plan_ , I thought. Dirk handed me the map Roxy wrote about. There were two places circled in bright pink pen. Judging from the buildings I had seen out the window, one was the place we were in and the other must have been where Jane and Roxy went. It looked like we were in some kind of small city, and the house where they were was just outside of it.

Dirk pointed out some buildings on the map. "I figured we would go to a couple convenience stores on our way there to rest up and get supplies, since there's a crapload of them out there." he explained. I nodded, still not quite sure if I believed what was going on or if I could handle it if it was. Fighting imps and villains in Sburb was one thing, but these were _zombies_. They used to be real people, and if I slipped up I could be in serious trouble. I wasn't ready to fight _zombies_ ; I would die for sure!

He stood up. "So, if you want I'll show you around a little", he offered. I nodded and stood up, still shaking from shock. Trying not to look out the window again in fear of passing out or screaming, I followed him out of the room and into the hallway where the lights were still flickering a concerning amount.

"Here's the kitchen", he said, leading me into a room with faded green and white tiles on the floor, a mini-fridge, and a stove. While Dirk looked around at the room, I opened the fridge. Inside were a couple bottles of water, some sandwiches, and three energy bars. "And that's why we can't stay here", Dirk said when he noticed me looking at the lack of food. He was right. It seemed like that was all there was here to eat. Roxy and Jane must have expected us to leave quickly.

Next we went into a lab. There were a few tables with shelves on top, covered in chemicals and tools I couldn't identify. I walked over to one table that seemed to have some kind of abandoned experiment set up.

"What's this?" I asked Dirk. He shrugged. I reached behind it to read some papers that might have had some information about what it was, but I instead knocked over a beaker that had a mysterious pink liquid in it. The glass shattered, and it spilled all over my hand. This didn't go unnoticed by Dirk, who quickly spun around and ran over to me, cursing loudly.

He looked at my hand, not seeming to know what to do about it any more than I did. "There's a sink over there", he pointed hurriedly at the other side of the room. I rushed over to the aforementioned sink to wash it off, but I was still freaking out. It wasn't burning my skin or anything, but there was no limit to what that could have been!

"Now would be a really good time to figure out what that was!" I said. Dirk picked up the papers I was trying to grab and quickly brought them over to the sink.

He studied the papers. "Yeah, I have no clue what the hell this is saying".

"Is it toxic?" I asked.

"I don't know, I'm not a chemist! On a scale of one to ten, how dead do you feel?" he asked.

I dried off my arm. "I feel fine", I said, unamused by his sarcasm. "We should probably bring that along with us, maybe someone else knows", I suggested. I was really worried that I was slowly dying, but I pushed away the feeling because I knew there was nothing else we could do now.

Dirk folded up the papers and stuffed them in his pocket before leading me out of the lab and into a room full of weapons. A _lot_ of weapons. He pointed me towards a table with some on it. "I grabbed a sword, and I think these are the kind of pistols you use," he said, handing me them. I grabbed a belt with holsters from a rack on the wall, and put them inside. "Also, you might want something with a blade", he suggested. I walked over to the area with a bunch of different knives and unenthusiastically grabbed a dagger.

"I don't know how to use this just so you know", I told him.

"What's there to know? You just stab things with it", he said.

"Easy for you to say," I muttered. Dirk had practically been using his sword since the day he was born.

He pushed a practice dummy over to me. "Go ahead, try it," he said. I hesitated for a moment before thrusting the dagger into the dummy's chest.

"There, it's dead. See? Easy," he said. I shrugged and slid it into my belt just to humor him.

"How are you not nervous?" I asked him.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there's a crowd of zombies outside, we're the only ones around, we don't know how we got here, and now we're going to go fight them. Even though I'm clearly yet reasonably freaking out, you're acting like this is nothing new!"

Dirk pushed up his shades. He tried to subtly tilt his head away from me, but I noticed. "I don't know; I mean I was awake an hour before you woke up. I've had time to… try and figure things out."

Until then I hadn't really thought about what he had done before I woke up. The thought of him freaking out like I had was strange to me. He always seemed to have everything together, even when it was obviously falling apart. That couldn't have been what he meant… could it?

He quickly changed the topic. "We should probably leave tomorrow morning. There's not really enough food for more than that, and I'm sick of this place already", he said.

"Sure" I agreed. Even though it meant having to go fight zombies and start this journey that was sure to be a nightmare, this building was quickly starting to become a bad memory. I wanted out of it as soon as possible.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dirk**

 _bzzt bzzt bzzt_

"Shut upppp"

I rolled over to turn off the alarm I had set the night before. Not wanting to get up as usual, my hand sleepily brushed the nightstand to reach it and ended up knocking it off the table. Worse, it was still going off. I sighed and opened my eyes to a dark room. For a brief moment I was very confused.

 _Oh right, that_.

I groaned when I suddenly remembered what was going on. I rubbed my eyes and sat there for a second regretting my life choices and dreading the day ahead before grabbing my shades from the nightstand and sitting up on the edge of the bed.

 _bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt_

"Shut up!" I yelled at it. I still wasn't sure why I decided to set it in the first place. It wasn't something I normally did, and I knew I was going to regret it. Maybe I was just nervous and wanted to make sure I didn't mess anything up by waking up late. At least now I knew not to do it again.

 _bzzt bzzt BZZT BZZT BZZT-_

"SHUT! UP!"

I grabbed my katana from next to the table and stabbed it. _Okay, maybe that was a bit excessive._ _Hope I don't need that thing again_. I walked over to the window and pulled open the curtains, squinting as light flooded into the room. _Yeah, that's still happening,_ I thought with a sigh when I saw the street below. It was still crawling with undead. I looked over at Jake. He was still asleep. _How can you possibly sleep through that?_

"Jake?" Yep, he was definitely asleep. Part of me didn't want to disturb him. He was actually really adorable when he was sleeping. But I knew we weren't going to get anywhere unless he was up.

I walked over to him to shake him awake. "Jake!"

His eyes opened immediately the second my hand touched him. "Huh?"

"It's morning. How did you sleep through the alarm?"

"Oh, um… " he glanced at the smashed alarm on the floor after rubbing his eyes, clearly disoriented from having just woken up in what was probably still an unfamiliar place. "I don't know…"

We spent an hour grabbing our things and reviewing the plan. I didn't want to admit it, but I was as much of a nervous wreck about this as he was being. After making sure we were definitely ready, we heaved our backpacks onto our backs and walked downstairs and stood at the door where we could already hear the moans of zombies outside through the door.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Not really" he gulped.

"It's ok, we know what we're doing. You've fought imps, there's not _that_ much of a difference", I tried to reassure him. I thought it was working a little, but I was also trying to calm myself down, and _I_ still felt the same. The windows on the bottom floor were boarded up, so I couldn't see exactly what the situation was. They could be right in front of the door or a couple yards away. I was basically just going to wing it.

Jake gulped, straightening his backpack with a sense of confidence I could tell was only half real.

"Let's go", he said. I unlocked the door and put my hand on the knob. I hesitated and looked back at Jake. His hand was tightly gripping one of his pistols, and I knew he would be fine. I reached behind me for my katana and swung the door open.

Sure enough, there was one right in front of the door immediately. I slashed at its body in a panic and watched it fall to the ground. _So that's how this works_. I was expecting some complicated ordeal where you had to hit a specific spot a certain number of times, but hey, no complaints. I looked down the street at a huge mob of zombies stumbling toward me. Turning in the other direction, I could see the situation wasn't much better over there. I ran out so Jake could get through and closed the door behind us.

"How are there this many?!" Jake called out as he shot at the zombies down the street. There were also some in the middle near the buildings, which I took care of myself. Once the hordes reached us it was chaos. I was practically swinging my sword blindly, and I could barely see Jake, but I could hear gunshots. _As long as I can hear gunshots I know he's okay_ , I thought. But that still wasn't doing much to calm me down. The scene in front of me was horrific. Undead corpses littered the street. Blood was everywhere, and some of the zombies were tripping over ones I had already killed.

Eventually, I had fought my way through the crowd. There was still a lot of them in another mob heading down the street, but I climbed up a fire escape so I could take a quick break where they couldn't reach me. From up there, I scanned the crowd for Jake. He soon emerged on the other side of the mob, panting and covered in blood. He looked up at me with an exhausted but relieved smile and climbed up.

"Shame, I kind of liked this shirt", he said when he reached the top.

"Well you could just take it off", I said.

He looked at me like I was crazy.

"Just kidding!" I added quickly. He laughed.

"Unless you want to" I muttered under my breath.

 _Dirk what the hell are you saying, shut up!_ Luckily he didn't seem to hear me.

"Glad I gave you that dagger?" I asked.

"For your information, I didn't need it," he said proudly.

"What?!" I shouted in disbelief. There was no way he could have gotten through that whole crowd without stabbing something.

He took the dagger out of his belt and showed it to me. Sure enough, it was completely clean. "Wow." I said. He _was_ really good.

"Well they say never to bring a knife to a gunfight." He smiled. I rolled my eyes and smiled back, but on the inside I was laughing at how much of a dork he was.

I checked the map. We had only made it to the street corner. Luckily this was the shortest trip, so we just had to go down one more long road before reaching the first store and taking a break for today. I figured it would be better to not go too far in one day so we could ease ourselves into the situation.

"Ready?" I asked as I looked up from the map to see Jake, who was already heading down the ladder. I jumped onto the ledge of the fire escape and dropped down, sticking the landing.

"Noob", I teased Jake as he stared at me in awe.

"What, it was only one story!" I lied. I had really just been trying to show off, but he didn't need to know that.

The rest of the trip wasn't that bad. There were a lot of zombies in the street, but no mobs as crowded as the first. We took them out quickly. It was actually kind of fun; just Jake and I, fighting side by side. It seemed more like a game than an actual apocalypse. I hoped I would never have to fight zombies without him, and to be honest I wasn't totally sure I could.

By the time we reached the store, Jake _still_ hadn't used the dagger.

Even now, after making it through this whole mess alive, I still don't understand how someone can fight that much with just a little pair of pistols and come out with only a couple scratches and an enthusiastic grin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Jake**

I pried open the sliding door of the CVS and we hurried inside before something else could get in. Looking around, it felt strange to be somewhere where people used to be. The inside of the store was mostly stocked and looked like it would be open for business in another hour. It was like it was completely untouched from all the devastation and chaos outside, and I wasn't sure whether to feel disturbed or at peace.

"So now what?" I asked.

"I guess we just wait until tomorrow," Dirk said, panting. We went to the back of the store to grab some food. Luckily there was a lot of it. Dirk took advantage of the situation and grabbed six bottles of Fanta, at the sight of which I snickered to myself and pretended not to notice.

"You don't think they have any washing machines in the back, do you?" I asked him, frowning at my completely ruined shirt.

"Why would they?" he replied with a look of confusion and mild amusement.

I sighed and went to another aisle so I could try to find a new shirt.

"You really don't understand what CVS is, do you?" He laughed. _Well excuse me if they don't have convenience stores on a private island._ I rolled my eyes and decided to drop the topic, ripping open a bag of pretzels and popping one into my mouth.

The next morning, we checked the map again. We had to continue down the street we were on, then turn onto another one that happened to be right next to the forest at the edge of the city. After walking down that street, we had to turn onto another, and another, and then we were there. Because this was much longer, we had to make sure we were prepared for anything that could go wrong. We decided that if we got separated we would keep going and meet up at the next store, and if we couldn't make it all the way we would stop in one of the business buildings along the way.

We grabbed our backpacks and refilled them with supplies from the store. Dirk had brought a couple extra weapons from the first building, and a lot of ammo for my pistols. He put a knife in his bag, and I put an extra gun in mine. We grabbed some energy bars from the snack aisle (I snuck in a bag of M&Ms) and some water bottles. After packing a first aid kit and some other useful-seeming things into the bags, we pulled them on and picked up our weapons. The backpacks weren't _too_ heavy, but the weight was reasonably a bit more than last time.

It was time to go again. After making sure we were completely ready, we rushed out into a street full of zombies. Luckily we were prepared for the swarm this time and took most of them out quickly so we were able to make our way down the street.

It didn't seem too much harder than the last trip, but then again, this was only the beginning. As I moved on, my muscles got sore and I was having more and more close calls. I wanted to call it quits, but I knew that if I couldn't handle _this_ , I was completely screwed for the rest of the trip. Besides, I didn't want to hold Dirk back. He seemed to be doing fine.

At one point, a zombie got shoved into him, knocking him back and sending his shades flying off his face. "Oh hell no!" he shouted. He quickly took out the zombie and then used the tip of his sword to pick them up off the ground then throw them up in the air. In a split second he caught them and put them back on before turning around to slice his sword through another zombie that definitely would have reached him if he had done it a moment later.

 _Yep_. I was jealous.

By the time we reached the street by the forest, my whole body was aching. I turned around to take care of a zombie that was being particularly stubborn, but when I turned back Dirk was nowhere in sight. _Oh no._ I scanned the crowd to see that in that short time he had gotten a lot further down the street than I had. I tried to get closer to him, but I only got pushed closer to the side of the street. Before I knew it, I was in the woods.

Now I was freaking out. I knew the forest would be crawling with zombies, even more than the streets were. I tried to get back out of the woods, but sure enough there were more undead coming out from darker places that I couldn't see, and I had to run deeper in to get away.

Eventually they had me backed up against a tree, surrounded by five of them. I gulped and pulled myself up onto a branch above my head. I climbed higher up the tree until I was sure they couldn't grab me, then I shot them.

 _Ok, now what?_ I sighed. I wasn't in any danger while I was in the tree, but I couldn't stay there forever.

I checked my map. Unfortunately, it was only a map of the city, so it wouldn't be helpful until I was out of the woods. I climbed up to the top of the tree and looked around. I was pretty far from the town, but at least I could just about see it. I gulped and looked down. I would have to try making a run for it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Roxy**

 **A week ago**

The wooden door looked like it was put in a million years ago, but nevertheless I jerked the knob quickly, crossing my fingers behind my back. _Unlocked._

"We're in!" I squealed.

Jane and I ran inside and slammed to door behind us. We had finally made it. The trip here had been horrible. Moving from building to building, having to fight those… things… the whole way. We were both glad that we had finally found a spot to rest for a while. I just wished we could have waited for Dirk and Jake. I felt horrible for leaving them there alone in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. But it was okay, they might have been on their way by now anyway. And there was no way the two of _them_ wouldn't make it.

Jane was leaning against the door panting. She had a long scratch down her leg and a couple on her arms, but nothing too serious. Most of my scratches were on my arms, but I had a cut on my cheek that had only just stopped bleeding.

"So… now… what?" Jane asked in between breaths.

"I don't know," I admitted. I sat down next to her and looked around the house.

It was full of antiques, and everything looked untouched yet used, like life had been going on as usual for whoever lived there until it just froze and all the people disappeared. It would have passed for any regular house if it wasn't for a window by the door, that was boarded up with decaying wood and had bits of glass scattered on the floor. When I first realized we were on a more populated version of Earth, I had been so excited. I thought that I would finally get to see what the world was like before all the crazy alien apocalypse stuff happened. But the sight of houses like these only disappointed me. It was all too familiar: just another home left in an instant. Another family gone.

I felt a tear in the corner of my eye. Jane slid down the door to sit with me. I wiped my eye, but she could still tell I was upset. "Don't worry Roxy. We can figure something out, and the boys will be here soon so they can help us", she assured me. But I could hear it in her voice. She was scared too.

 **A/N: This chapter and the next two are really short because it just worked out that way. Some chapters are written just to get an idea across and can't be expanded too much, as much as I'm trying to. Trust me, there will be** _ **much**_ **longer chapters coming up. Today and the next time I update (which should be Wednesday), I'll upload two chapters to make up for that.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Jake**

 **Present**

After some more careful consideration and an attempt to boost my confidence, I climbed down the tree onto the forest floor. There weren't very many zombies around me this time, and I took out the few that were there fairly quickly. But I knew that as I got closer to the city there would be much, much more, and they would be hard to see. I advanced through the forest, ducking behind trees to sneak up behind them. Soon I could see the distant tips of buildings. I was almost there!

But then everything went to hell.

Suddenly, a zombie knocked into me with a thud. I stumbled back, startled, and saw another huge mob coming into the clearing I had found. I shot at them, but the noise only brought another horde behind me. Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded. I tried to shoot them, but they were closing in on me and it was hard to tell where my gun was even pointing as I struggled to avoid their grips.

I yelped as one of my pistols was knocked out of my hand and onto the ground. Desperately I tried to stand my ground, at this point blindly firing into the mass of zombies. But every time I was able to get one down, more would take its place. Their hands were grabbing at me, jerking me in every direction at once.

Suddenly I felt a searing pain in my arm, right below my left shoulder. _No._ I froze, dropping my other gun. I felt a trickle of thick liquid down my arm and bit my lip to keep myself from screaming. The world was starting to spin out of focus. More hands were grabbing at me.

I was going to die. This was it; I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. We had so much farther to go, but my part of the journey was going to end here.

No, I couldn't let this happen. I couldn't die before even letting Dirk know what happened. I couldn't die now; I had to get back to him. I had to see him one more time.

But my glasses were in my backpack so they wouldn't break, and my pistols were gone. There was no way I could get the spare gun out of my bag. I was completely weaponless. Wait… no I wasn't.

My hand fumbled to the dagger on my belt. I grabbed it and thrust it into the zombie that had bitten me from behind. It fell into a bunch of the others that were grabbing me. Taking the opportunity while they were temporarily stopped, I ran.

I didn't have time to take out any others in my path. I just kept shoving them away. I didn't know where I was going, I just had to get away. More and more of them were coming towards me, and they could have easily grabbed me. They might have, I don't even remember anymore because I wasn't paying attention. The whole thing was just a blur.

After a lot of running I finally made it out. I pushed my way through the zombies in the street and ducked into an empty alley. I saw a ladder, and climbed up onto the roof. I was alone.

I sat down and put my head in my hands. I was nauseous, I was dizzy, and I was in more pain than I had ever felt in my life. I didn't know how long I had. I wasn't completely sure what just happened or how I wasn't dead yet. I didn't know anything.

 _What now?_


	6. Chapter 6

**Karkat**

 **Two Days Ago**

My eyes blinked open to an unfamiliar room. _Wait… was I just… sleeping?_ That wasn't something I had been able to do properly in a _long_ time. I quickly sat up. I was in a human bed. _What the hell?_ I looked around to see that the whitewashed room was completely empty except for a table and six beds. On the other beds next to mine were Tavros, Sollux, Equius, Gamzee, and Eridan. _What?_ I got up and walked over to the window to find out where we were.

One look outside sent me into instant panic. _What the heck is going on?_ I looked around. Nobody else was awake. "Hey!" I shouted, but they didn't move. They were still breathing; they couldn't be dead again. I walked over to Sollux and shook him. "Hey idiot wake up!" Nothing.

I suddenly felt something in my pocket. I reached into it and pulled out a note. I had no idea where it came from, but I read it out of curiosity. The words flashed across my brain, sending a wave of memories flooding into my mind. _Oh no._

 _What did I do?_

I heard a groan behind me and looked over to see Tavros sitting up and rubbing his eyes. I shoved the paper back into my pocket. "Karkat?" he said, "W… what's going on?". _I should really tell him_ , I gulped. I couldn't, no, nobody would ever forgive me. It felt like the note was burning a hole in my pocket. If I told him maybe there would be a way to undo what I had done. But I would be known as the one who couldn't be trusted to make decisions. I was their leader, and if I made a bad choice, _I_ would have to be the one to fix it.

"I don't know."

 **A/N: Ok I** _ **promise**_ **it doesn't get any shorter than this. In my defense, this was the sixth chapter I wrote and considering I started this almost a year ago, the quality gets better later on. Also, I know the lack of cursing seems pretty out of character for a panicking Karkat, but I'm just not comfortable putting words like that in my writing and if that's a problem for you, there are plenty of opportunities for you to replace the words in your head.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Jake**

 **Present**

I pulled a medical kit out of my backpack and sloppily wrapped the wound with some gauze while I tried to formulate a plan. Do I just sit here and wait for death? No, there had to be something I could do. Maybe if I could manage to get to the next convenience store Dirk would know what to do? If not… at least I could say goodbye.

I loaded my spare pistol and stood up. I still felt like the world was on its side and I was going to throw up over the side of the building any second now, but I went anyway, trying to stay on higher ground most of the trip because I didn't think I could take much more fighting. What other choice did I have?

When I finally reached the store, I saw that it was completely surrounded by zombies. There was no way around them. I had to make a run for it. I climbed carefully down the ladder of the fire escape I was on. I thought that I could take out most of them by shooting them from far away, but I was so dizzy that my aim was way off and I ended up with a half-loaded gun and only two dead zombies.

I took a deep breath. There was only one way I had any chance of getting in. I ran straight into the crowd, pushing zombies away and shooting blindly. One grabbed my wounded shoulder and yanked me back, making me scream in pain. I twisted around and shot it in the head. It fell, but I could barely feel my arm. I kept running towards the store. I saw Dirk standing by the glass inside with a scared look on his face, watching to see where all the noise was coming from. When I locked eyes with him, I knew I was going to make it. As I finally approached the store, he held the door open and grabbed me when I ran inside.

"Jake what happened?! Are you okay?!" he kept yelling and asking me questions, but I couldn't answer, and I could barely hear him. My vision was hazy and my body was weak. Everything was fading. I collapsed.

When I came out of it, I was sitting up against the wall and couldn't feel my arm. I looked up to see Dirk examining boxes in the medical aisle.

"Dirk?"

He spun around and ran over to me.

"God, English, what happened?!"

"I…" What did happen?

 _Oh. Right._

"There… there was a lot of them... and I got pushed into the woods… and I got lost", I said.

I could hear the panic in his voice. "But what happened to your arm?!" he asked, gesturing frantically at the blood-soaked makeshift bandage clinging to my skin.

I had to tell him, but I couldn't bear to see how he would react if I did. He was already freaking out about me getting lost, I could only imagine it being worse if he knew about the bite.

"I just… scratched it on a branch."

I was regaining consciousness slowly and my mind still wasn't fully awake, so I didn't realize how little sense I was making.

"That's way too much blood to have come from a tree," he said, lowering his eyebrows.

"It was a really deep cut."

I could tell he knew I was lying.

"Whatever, just let me clean it up. You obviously have no idea how to wrap a wound."

He reached for the gauze on my arm and I yanked it away in panic, ignoring the look of concerned surprise on his face.

"No, it's fine, I'll do it," I said, using the wall to support me as I tried to stand.

"What are you doing?! Sit down, you just passed out and you've been bleeding out for like twenty minutes!"

"It's been longer than that," I mumbled under my breath as I kept walking towards the medical aisle. "Probably about an hour by now".

"Jake, what the hell?! Sit down!"

"I'm fine!" I tried to hold back tears as I walked faster away from Dirk. I knew he was going to find out. I was such a bad liar; I was really just wasting time.

"Jake!" he called after me.

"It's _nothing_!" I kept insisting, as though saying it enough would make it come true.

Dirk grabbed my arm, sending a chill down my spine. I tried to pull away but I was too weak. I wanted to tell him now more than ever, but I just couldn't. I couldn't even bear to look at him. Just imagining his disappointment was enough to break me. I couldn't stop it anymore, I burst into tears. My head was spinning and I lost my balance. He caught me and sat me up against the shelf.

"I'm fine," I whispered again.

"Jake."

The light glinted off his shades in a way it rarely ever did, and all of a sudden my eyes met his. There was a look of concern mixed with fear that he was trying to hide. It was a look I had never seen on him before, yet it felt familiar. He had to have figured out what had really happened. That had to be what was leaving this foreign expression on his face, and it was all my fault.

He reached for my arm again, and this time I didn't pull away. I watched his face, frozen, as he slowly unwrapped the gauze around the bite.


	8. Chapter 8

**Dirk**

I was right. I didn't want to believe it, but it was right there in front of me. Jake... Jake had been bitten.

For a few minutes all I could do was sit there in silence. I wasn't sure how to react. This couldn't be happening. We had a whole plan set up, and now it was falling apart so quickly. We had been doing so well; we could have made it! We were going to find Roxy and Jane. We were going to do this _together_. I didn't want to be alone.

I looked away from the bite and met Jake's eyes. He had been watching me in silence. He was frozen, and he looked more scared than I had ever seen him. I didn't know what to say. We both sat there for a while in silence and shock until he looked away from me and stared at the floor.

"I'm sorry," Jake said quietly, tears rolling down his cheeks.

I looked up at him. _What did he have to apologize for?_ "It's not your fault," I told him, but this only brought more tears, and I thought I was about to cry too.

"No, it is. It's all my fault."

"No it's not!"

"Yes it is! I couldn't even manage to stay alive for _three days_! I couldn't fight off a bunch of _brainless creatures_ that should have been easy to kill! I should have just stayed at the research facility, you should have just left _without_ me! I'm only slowing you down. You probably could have made it to Roxy and Jane already if I wasn't with you. I might have even lived longer if I _starved_ to death there! But _no_ , I decided to come, and now we're in this mess all because of me." he said between sobs.

I couldn't believe what he was saying. How could he take the blame for any of this? If anything it was my fault for coming up with this stupid plan. We could have avoided the forest; it wouldn't have taken too much longer. "No, stop that! It's not your fault, you did what you could. And you couldn't have stayed behind, I wouldn't have left without you."

"Well you should have! I'm too weak, I was doomed from the start."

"No, stop, it's ok. Everything… everything is going to be fine" I said, not knowing how I was going to follow up that thought and not sure if I even believed it myself.

He seemed to calm down a little. "I looked at some of the papers in the lab. They looked like they were from tests on the zombies and they had some information," I said. I was just saying anything that came to mind at this point. In the back of my mind I knew there was nothing we could do, but I just wouldn't accept it.

"Yeah, maybe… maybe we can stop the infection? How much… how much time do I have?" he was obviously trying to convince himself that he would be fine, but I don't think he really believed it. Neither did I. We were both just trying to forget it.

I thought back to the first day to try to remember what I could make out from the papers, but all I could really do was guess. "I think about two hours?" I said.

Jake put his head in his hands. _He said it had already been about an hour_. He was crying again. We both knew this was the end. There was no point in pretending anymore. I sat down next to him, but I looked away. Even though I was wearing my shades, I couldn't risk him seeing my eyes or the tears on my cheeks.

"Dirk… you'll… you'll kill me, right?"

 _That_ made me look at him. I couldn't believe he would say something like that. But I hadn't really thought of what would happen if he turned. I didn't think it would happen. I couldn't kill Jake, even if it wasn't really him. I didn't want to have to face that. _I won't have to. We can fix this_ , I kept thinking. I knew I had to stop lying to myself but the truth felt like a knife in my heart that twisted every time I started to accept it.

"What? No, I… I won't have to," I said shakily.

"Dirk, you know… you know it's over."

"NO!" I shouted. I buried my face in my hands and completely lost it. I was breathing heavily and tears were streaming down my face. I couldn't take this anymore.

"You know what you have to do, and I… I know you can do it."

Every time he said it I felt worse. Part of me knew he was right, but part of me was too scared to accept it. I looked him dead in the eyes. "No, we can fix this. Everything is going to be fine" I said, "I…" _I promise_ , I wanted to say. But I just couldn't bring myself to lie to him like that.

"Dirk…"

 _This is real. Jake got bitten, and he's going to turn into one of those…things. We aren't going to be together. I'm going to have to do this all by myself. He'll be gone forever._

I sat in silence, trying to think of what it would be like without Jake. He stood up, seeming to have a newfound confidence, but his voice was trembling.

"If I leave now, I can go back the way we came and I'll probably be close to the research facility by the time I… before the two hours are up," he said, wincing as he put his backpack on over his injured arm. I stood up to help him but my heart was still racing and my mind was filling with unreasonable thoughts.

"No… I… I'll come with you" I said, with full knowledge of what that meant. What scares me now is I think I really meant it. I couldn't keep going if Jake was gone.

He quickly realized what I was saying. "No!" he gasped. He came back over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders. "You can't die, Dirk, you- you have to keep going, that's not going to solve anything!"

I didn't answer.

"Please Dirk… you need to make it to Jane and Roxy… you have to fix this… for me."

"I don't know if I can," I admitted.

Jake was holding back more tears. "I know you can... You're strong, you could probably take out all the zombies on the planet in one hit… Just… Imagine if this was the other way around… _Then_ we'd have a problem" he smiled weakly. He was trying to make me feel better, but it wasn't working very much. I sighed but nodded. I was going to keep going. For Jake.

"Pass me that gun over there?" he asked, pointing to a counter with some weapons I had raided from a nearby shop while I was waiting for him. "I have to make sure I go as far as I can," he added. I picked it up and handed it to him.

"Are you sure you can even make it there without passing out again?"

He didn't answer, but I could tell what he was thinking. _What other choice do I have?_

Jake walked towards the door. At this point the wall I was struggling to rebuild in my mind completely collapsed. _He can't leave._ He turned back to me, smiling through tears, and said "Tell Jane and Roxy I said hi." I was speechless, so I just nodded.

My inescapable state of shock made me feel like I was barely conscious. Everything that was happening around me was a blur. I just couldn't wrap my head around what was going on. All I could manage to say was a quiet "Goodbye."

He opened the door slowly, as if someone was making him do it, then walked outside and closed it behind him. He looked like he was in a nightmare crying because he couldn't wake up from it, which I guess wasn't far from the truth.

I walked up to the window and we both just stood there staring at each other, crying. I didn't care that he could see my tears anymore, and I was only half worrying that he could see my eyes through my shades.

He looked so scared. I wanted to smash the glass and stop him from leaving, but I couldn't. He had one hand pressed up against the glass like it was a tether to safety. I put my hand on the window too to meet his. He mouthed three words to me through the glass.

Three words that he had never said to me before.

I was too shocked to say anything.

I have done many things in my life that I regret.

But my biggest regret was not saying them back.


	9. Chapter 9

**Jake**

I had stopped a couple buildings away from the store and climbed onto a ledge to think about what just happened. I had expected Dirk to find some way to fix this like he always did or at least make me feel a little better. I didn't expect that he would be as helpless and upset as I was. I guess I shouldn't have thought that he could always be as calm, cool, and collected as he usually seemed.

When he started crying I didn't know what to do. I had just come up with some fake confidence to try to calm him down. I had come up with my plan in just a minute. It seemed like a good idea since all that mattered to me was that I wouldn't hurt Dirk, but after seeing how heartbroken he was, I think I hurt him anyway.

I guess it was a good thing that I had to take responsibility for what to do. At least it meant I got the whole conversation over with, although I'm not sure if it was worth it if it meant never seeing him again. And now I was left to deal with my feelings all by myself, in the last moments of my life.

This wasn't how I wanted to die. I was in pain, I was scared, I was alone. This was just… _wrong_. I always thought I would die of old age with someone holding my hand beside me, someone like…

 _Dirk._ I told him that I loved him. I wasn't sure why I had waited so long. I guess I had just been worried that even though I _never_ wanted to be with someone more than I wanted to be with him, there was always the chance I could be making a mistake. This wasn't the kind of thing I wanted to risk messing up. But in that moment I had just realized that it really _was_ true, and saying it as my last words to him was better than not saying it at all.

 _My last words._ That's when my panic somehow became even worse than it already was. I was _dying_. I wasn't even in my twenties yet and I was already dying. I was supposed to have my whole life ahead of me. So many things could have happened, I could have gone so many places, I could have done so many things, but instead all I had to show for my life was… nothing. I had barely made a difference.

 _No, stop it._ Thinking about it was just going to make it worse and waste time. _Focus_ , I told myself. I had to do what needed to be done. I climbed down from the ledge and started to run.

I kept going, the rhythm of my feet pounding against the street trying to drown out the echoing of the thoughts in my head. I focused desperately on trying to find something to fill my mind with instead of worrying about what was about to happen. But nothing was left of the world, and it wouldn't even matter if there was. Anything I could think of would just be gone along with my life in less than an hour.

Finally, I stopped. I couldn't go any more. My whole body was aching, I was nauseous and dizzy, and I felt like I was going to collapse right there. I climbed up a fire escape with what was left of my energy and leaned against the wall.

Looking out at all the buildings dimly lit by the setting sun, I finally fully accepted that this was it. I slid my back down the wall and sat on the cold metal grating. My entire life had led up to now. I couldn't do any of the things I wanted to do. I was never going to see anyone I loved again.

I felt a flicker of hope deep in my chest as I leaned up against the cold pipe embedded in the wall of the building, watching the world blur in front of me. I didn't think I would be able to do this unless I pretended nothing was wrong. The edges of my vision darkened, eclipsing the city landscape with a hazy feeling split between peace and fear. But I was going to be okay. I was ready to accept whatever was about to happen. The sound of zombies in the once loud and full of life streets suddenly cut out, replaced with an empty kind of silence unlike anything I had ever heard. And then everything went black.

 **A/N: Sorry this chapter is late! I may or may not have been sucked into the Welcome To Night Vale fandom the past couple days and was spending all my time binge listening to all of it in four days. As of now I'll return to regular uploads!**


	10. Chapter 10

Dirk 

He's gone. That's it. I will never see him again. I couldn't save him, and now he's gone.

A constant haunting loop of these thoughts and others like them had been circling endlessly through my head ever since Jake left. I was trying to sleep to take my mind off things, but every time I closed my eyes another horrible image of him about to die popped into my head and wouldn't leave, only adding to the whirlwind of agony holding me captive. After a while of tossing and turning on the tear-stained pile of blankets and other miscellaneous things I found in the store that I tried to use as a makeshift pillow, it occurred to me to check the clock.

It had been an hour and a half. He was really gone. I had no more time to think of some miraculous way to fix it.

The thought only brought more pathetic crying. I had never felt more alone in my life. Roxy and Jane could be dead too for all I knew. I could be the only person left on the planet, and with my luck I probably was.

What more was there to do? What's the purpose of living if nobody else is? I probably wouldn't have kept going if Jake hadn't told me to I had to survive. For him, I reminded myself. He told me that he thought I could take out every zombie on the planet.

A newfound determination filled me as I decided that was exactly what I was going to do. I looked at my map. The next CVS wasn't that far off. It was getting dark, but I didn't care. I needed to avenge him. I grabbed my katana from the counter and walked towards the door.

I clearly wasn't getting any sleep anyway. I needed revenge.

 **A/N: This chapter is short so you're getting two today! Also I'm going on a trip starting Sunday and I won't be able to post for a week, but I'll be sure to get back to regular uploads as soon as I can when I get back! By the way, this story is pre-written and I should mention that when it's all done there will be 49 chapters, so... look forward to that!**


	11. Chapter 11

**Sollux**

I was in the middle of the city street, standing back-to-back with Aradia. We were both shooting rapid fire at the circle of zombies closing in around us. I was worried that we wouldn't make it, but deep down I was confident that we would be able to survive this together.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light and the colors around me were fading. Everything was becoming… _transparent_? I tried to blink it away but nothing changed. All the shapes around me were warping into ghost-like images in shades of blue. _What's going on?!_ I started to panic.

"Sollux?"

I heard Aradia's voice faintly and turned around to face her, only to find that it was happening to her too. I gasped. There was a buzzing in my ears.

"Sollux!" she shouted again. Her voice was muffled along with everything else.

I turned back around and saw that now the ghost shapes of my surroundings were starting to look pixelated, and my heart was racing faster and faster. I squinted to see that everything was made up of little blue 0s and 1s. The gun in my hand was the same, and I looked down to realize that so was I.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Aradia was shaking me and seemed to be shouting my name, but I couldn't hear anything. Some of the zombies around us were fading from blue to red. _Did she not see it_? Some of the binary units in my hand were flashing to red, and the color quickly spread to the rest of me.

I was really freaking out now. The zombies were coming closer and closer, but everything looked like a videogame that was lagging horribly. Aradia was still shaking me, and my hearing was fading in and out.

Suddenly there was another flash, and everything was back to normal. But now that I could see properly again, I could see that the circle of zombies had reached within inches of us. Suddenly I realized that there was no way we would both make it out of this alive, and I knew what I had to to. I was able to spot a small opening in the crowd, grabbing Aradia's arm and pushing her towards it so she could get away, just in time for them to close in around me. I couldn't let her get hurt again because of me, even if it came at the cost of my own life.

Over my screams of pain I could just barely hear Aradia trying to save me.

"Sollux!"

"Sollux!"

"Sollux!" My eyes snapped open to see Aradia standing over me looking concerned. "Sollux are you ok?!"

 _It was a dream._ I breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah I'm fine," I said.

"Are you sure?" She moved aside and I sat up. "You were screaming!"

"Just a bad dream," I assured her.

Or at least I thought it was.


	12. Chapter 12

**Dirk**

In the two days since Jake left I had made it twice as far as I had planned to. By now I was halfway to the place where Jane and Roxy wanted us to meet. It was easy, really. I took out every zombie I came across before they could even touch me. I put an equal amount of rage into each kill, and didn't even give a thought to all the blood that coated my shoes and splattered across my shirt. Those mindless creatures deserved to die even more now than they ever did before. Any one of them could have been responsible for what happened to Jake.

I skipped a stop on the way because I was too into the fight to stop. I carried on for hours and the adrenaline didn't fade a bit. Or at least, it didn't until now. With every swing of my sword and every zombie corpse collapsing to the ground I expected to feel better, but nothing changed. Coming up on the next store, I was finally realizing that trying to get revenge wasn't going to make the pain go away. Nothing was going to make it go away. It was just going to drown me until the day I died and there was nothing I could do about it. At least I had gotten most of my anger out. I lowered my sword and walked up to the door, defeated, resorting to shoving away the zombies instead of fighting them because I just wasn't in the mood anymore.

This store was a two story CVS on the corner of the street with an apartment upstairs. When I walked inside, the first thing I noticed was the gear strewn all over the floor. There was a backpack with the contents spilled out and scattered all over, some medical supplies in a pile on the counter, and a huge rifle leaning up against a magazine rack. I couldn't imagine who's stuff it was. The only people who I knew had woken up here were Jane, Roxy, Jake and I, but there was no way these were the girls' things. If Roxy had done that to her stuff Jane would have killed her; she was way too neat.

"Hello?" I called into the store. I was answered only by the rattling of an air conditioner that had been left running for far too long. Suddenly, I heard running footsteps from upstairs and creaking floorboards. Someone _was_ here. I went to the back of the store, still keeping a careful hand on my katana, and ducked into the storage room. I quickly spotted a door and opened it to find the stairs to the upper floor.

My grip on the sword tightened as I walked carefully up the steps, careful not to make a sound. Whoever was up there was going through a lot of trouble to make sure they weren't heard, and it made me suspicious. I froze before reaching the top when I heard my footstep make a long, low creak. I cursed under my breath. Now they _had_ to know I was coming. But there was nothing I could do about that now. I continued up the steps and walked into an office. It was empty, but there was an open window near the front that I could have sworn was closed when I saw the building from outside. The window was in front of a fire escape. I stuck my head through, and to my surprise saw a slightly familiar-looking troll standing there.

He was leaning against the wall, a long scratch down his cheek and a wrapped up wrist. His blood-stained hope t-shirt reminded me of Jake, but he looked nothing like him. He had more focused and unfriendly eyes, a longer nose, and purple-streaked black hair that stuck out like he had tried to style it but didn't have the time.

At the sight of me, he shot a look of disgust and annoyance into my eyes. He turned around quickly and ran down the fire escape. "Wait!" I called after him. I hadn't expected to see anyone again except maybe Jane and Roxy. I didn't want to lose any chance I had of finding someone else. I climbed out the window and followed him.

I jumped down from the fire escape and chased him down the street, pushing through the crowd of zombies so I wouldn't lose him. I saw him duck into a tight alleyway and caught him at the end of it, pressed against the wall. It was a dead end. He had nowhere to run.

He turned and looked at me, the same displeased look on his face. "What do you want?" he sneered. He had a slight British accent which made no sense considering he wasn't from Earth, and his voice sounded just like he looked: like a pompous arrogant snob that thought he was the only important one on the planet.

"I want to know why you're running", I answered.

He scowled. " _Because_ I want you to leave me alone".

"Why?" I asked. How was he not happy to see another person alive? I understood not wanting to interact with people since I wasn't a very extroverted person either. But in a situation like this, you're pretty stupid if you don't realize that you need all the help you can get.

He paused, the look on his face not getting any less unpleasant. Then he reached into the holster of the belt wrapped around his black jeans and pulled out a pistol. He quickly held it up in front of me, aiming straight for my chest, and rested his finger on the trigger.

"I _said_ leave me alone".

I quickly realized that if he shot me I wouldn't be able to avoid it. The alleyway was so narrow it could barely fit two people side by side. But I didn't think he would really do it.

"How can you not want to team up with anyone? Everyone is dead and you want to completely ignore the few people that aren't? Are you out of your mind?!" I shouted.

"That's some tone for someone who I could kill right now".

"Nobody can be _this_ antisocial. What do you have against working with someone?"

"I'm just done with people!"

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

"Being in a group only slows you down. It would be so easy to just get the job done and leave, but _no_. Everyone has their own plans and nobody knows how to admit that they're wrong, so everyone's ideas just get mixed together into some stupid ordeal that only wastes time and doesn't even work half the time. Teamwork is just some made-up crap that weak people use to trick others into carrying them to safety. Nobody really cares about each other anyway, they only care about themselves. That's just how it works, and the sooner you realize that the sooner _you_ can stop caring about _them_."

Every word he said seemed to sicken him more and more. He really _did_ want to carry on alone. He really _was_ that stupid.

"That's not what it's about! You _need_ other people! It's impossible to survive out here alone! The moment you get separated from someone you're doomed, especially if all you have to fight with is a stupid pistol!"

I realized that I was talking about Jake, but it was too late to take it back and say something else. Besides, it was true. I didn't want anything like that to happen again, and I could already see it happening to him now. I couldn't stand this guy, but I didn't want anyone to get hurt, no matter who it was.

"What, I suppose you speak from personal experience?" he said. I clenched my fists, trying unsuccessfully not to get mad at him. He didn't know he was pouring salt into an open wound.

"Not exactly" I muttered, but he didn't hear me.

"You're on your own and you're doing just fine!" he said.

"I'm alone against my will, not because I have trust issues".

That seemed to get to him. He was done arguing. His grip on the pistol tightened and he looked me dead in the eyes.

"If you don't leave right now, I _swear_ I will kill you".

And now I could tell he meant it.

I was starting to get nervous. "Wait, how about this?"

"What now?" he moaned, sounding more and more like an annoyed six year old every second.

"Just let me stay in the store for tonight, ok? I'll leave tomorrow morning and if you really don't want to come you don't have to."

He paused for a moment, then groaned and put the gun back in his belt.

"Waste of a bullet anyway," he mumbled, walking towards me. I could tell I wasn't going to like him. Maybe leaving him behind wouldn't be such a bad idea.

"I'm Dirk," I said.

"Great." He shoved past me and walked out of the alley without even looking at me.

I followed him. "You're not even going to tell me your name?"

"Eridan," he said without turning around.

"I think I've seen you before in the dream bubbles."

"Probably."

I couldn't stand this. "Not much for conversation, are you?"

"I don't believe in saying things that aren't worth saying. Unlike you, obviously."

 _How has nobody killed him by now?_

I decided to ignore his comment and keep trying to get him to lighten up. "Have you been alone this whole time?" I asked.

He still wasn't looking at me, but I could tell he was rolling his eyes. "No. I was with Karkat and the others but I left. I've wanted to get away from them for a while, and now that that stupid game's over there's nothing to stop me."

There was an awkward silence. "There, that's my life story. Happy?" he said with obvious sarcasm.

"Sure." I sighed. We didn't talk again until we got back to the store and he told me his rules, which were basically not to go upstairs, not to touch his stuff, not to talk to him, and basically anything else an annoying older brother would say. I wanted to punch him in the face, but I humored him since he was the one who got here first. Not to mention that he had just tried to kill me and I didn't want to tick him off too much in case he was thinking of trying again.

But I quickly broke my agreement to follow his rules when I remembered his bandaged wrist. "What happened to your wrist?" I asked as he began to walk to the stairs in the back.

"Nothing."

"Oh come on." I didn't want a repeat of the conversation I had with Jake before… before he left.

"It's just a cut," he said, finally stopping to answer my question. I flinched at hearing those words again, and I could tell he knew I wasn't buying it. He walked back over to me and unwrapped his wrist. It definitely wasn't a bite. It was a deep cut that wrapped around the back of his wrist like a bracelet. He winced in pain and quickly rewrapped it. "See, I'm not an idiot, I can survive on my own without getting bitten. How weak do you think I am?" he snapped before turning around and going back upstairs.

He definitely knew how to hit all the sore spots. I hadn't even told him what happened to Jake. Although if I did, he probably would have said the same things but on purpose.

"How did you get that cut?" I asked.

I could just feel him rolling his eyes at me again. "I got in a fight," he called to me from the back of the store.

Before I could respond, I heard the door slam.


	13. Chapter 13

**Eridan**

 **Three Days Ago**

I walked through the lobby towards the entrance of the hotel, my backpack slung over one shoulder and my rifle tucked under my arm. I was silent, although even if I had said anything it would have been drowned out by the ear-splitting sound of Karkat screaming at me.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?! You can't just leave; that's ridiculous! You'll get yourself killed! Get back here!" He shouted.

I was barely listening to him. I walked faster as he followed me, and the others were starting to gather around, but they didn't seem to care very much that I was leaving. I didn't bother to point that out. To be honest, I hadn't been expecting anything else from them.

"It hasn't even been an hour since you woke up! What, you want to just leave us the second you realize you can?!"

"That's the plan," I muttered.

"Eridan, I swear the only way you're walking out that door is over my dead body!"

I turned around. I was flattered that he really cared that much, but that didn't matter enough for me to stay. I had been tired of putting up with all their crap for so long, and now I could finally leave. I wasn't going to let this opportunity go to waste.

I dropped my backpack.

"Have it your way," I said.

Before Karkat could react, I raised my rifle and shot at his head, missing on purpose. I heard a couple of shrieks and everyone jumped out of the way. I definitely wasn't going to actually kill him since he was one of the only ones here I _didn't_ hate with a passion, but I had to get the point across that I was leaving and he couldn't stop me.

He stood there, gaping at me, before suddenly grabbing his sickles off the coffee table nearby and running at me.

 _Wow._ I didn't think he would actually fight me. I stepped back to grab a pair of daggers out of the side pocket of my backpack and dropped the rifle. I wasn't as good with hand-to-hand combat, but I didn't have much of a choice here.

He tried an overhead hit, but I blocked the blade of his sickle with one of my daggers. He swung the other one to the side of my head and I blocked it too. I grabbed his wrist and twisted until he dropped it, then I pushed him back. I could tell he wasn't really trying. He didn't want me dead either.

Realizing this made me feel sort of bad about what I was doing, but not bad enough. I was sick of dealing with these people, I kept reminding myself. The sooner I got away from them the better.

He ran at me again, faster this time. I swung at his head, but he ducked to the side and grabbed my hand. He wasn't going to give up. I had to take this a little more seriously. I shoved him off and swung at him again. This time he couldn't dodge it quickly enough, and the dagger scratched his cheek. It wasn't deep, but it was bleeding enough to hopefully teach him a lesson. He gasped.

He pushed me back and I tried to slash at him again, but I didn't expect him to escape that time. He slid to the side and kicked me in the stomach, quickly trying to wipe off his cheek in an instinct to hide his blood even though basically all of us knew what color it was by now. I fell to the floor and stood back up quickly. The fight continued like that for a couple more minutes, until I tried to throw one of my daggers at him. He knocked it to the side and swung one of his sickles towards my chest. I knocked it out of his hand and kept fighting with only one dagger.

We didn't stop fighting. It was only getting more and more intense. I could see the others out of the corner of my eye, wondering if they should intervene, but clearly intimidated by the bitter look on my face and the clinking sound of metal on metal.

Suddenly, I felt a searing pain in my wrist. I staggered back and looked down at it. It was gushing blood, so much that I could barely see the cut it was coming from.

"Eridan!" Karkat shouted, stopping and dropping his sickles to the floor. At least he didn't seem to have done it on purpose. It wasn't really that bad. It just hurt a lot and would take a while to heal. But at the time I was too angry to realize that.

"You almost cut off my wrist!" I lied.

"Eridan I didn't mean to- I was just trying to-"

"What?! You honestly thought fighting me would stop me from leaving?!"

"You're the one who freaking _shot_ me! I was just trying to make you stay-"

"Of course! You were just trying to make things better! That's what you do, you're always trying to fix things but you keep making them worse! That's what happened with the game, that's the whole reason why everyone _died_ in the first place! It's all because of you trying to make things better! I'm _done_ with it!" I burst. I didn't notice Feferi coming up behind me. She grabbed my arm.

"Eridan, calm-"

I yanked my arm away and pushed her back before turning to the others. Some of them looked terrified, others had the same look of hatred on their face that I imagined they had been feeling towards me all along.

"I'm done with all of you!" I shouted before hauling my backpack over my shoulder and picking up my rifle. I paused to make sure nobody was planning on trying to stop me again and walked out the front door, holding a very specific finger up above my head.


	14. Chapter 14

**Dirk**

 **Present**

Eridan stayed upstairs for the rest of the day. I helped myself to the food in the store and waited for him to come down and grab something, which he never did. Since I hadn't gotten enough time for proper sleep since the day before Jake and I left the research facility, I decided to go to bed early. I threw down a couple of blankets in the back corner and lay down.

I tried to clear my head, but I couldn't stop thinking about what Eridan had said about working with other people. _How could anyone be that antisocial?_ It was sad to imagine someone who was so emotionally damaged that they pushed away everyone they loved.

That's when I realized how many things from my past could have changed that might have made me like that. I could have given up on so much in my life, but I never did. Even after what happened to Jake, I kept moving. I could easily keep trying to fight away my pain, but eventually I would end up tortured by wondering why it wasn't stopping, and I would be pushing others away too. But I wasn't going to let that happen. I was just as scared of having to go through the same thing again with someone else as I was haunted by the recent past, but that didn't stop me from trying to save Eridan from himself. I had to, because…

because…

 _Why?_

 _Stop_ , I told myself. That was enough deep thinking for today. Again I tried to push all my thoughts to the back of my mind. It wasn't working. _What was that thing people do in these situations?_ I thought. _Oh right, think of a beach or something._ I thought it was stupid, but I tried it anyway. I pictured a beach, with waves crashing onto the shore, the sun reflecting off the water, all that cheesy stuff. _Yeah this is stupid._ Maybe it would have worked if I actually cared about nature. Instead I tried to focus on anything I could remember from before my already broken world was shattered to pieces. Happy memories flashed across my mind, but none of them could distract me enough. Eventually, I settled on something important enough to replace all my other thoughts.

A long time ago, before any of us had even heard of Sburb, Roxy figured out a way for us to video chat with Jane and Jake. A lot of the time we would use that to talk to each other instead of Pesterchum. We would have a big group chat at least once a week, but we would also use it to talk one on one. Jake and I often found ourselves talking past midnight, and although the horrible connection made it a little difficult, it ended up being one of my favorite times of the day.

Jake always had a lot to say, so he would do most of the talking. Most of the time when we were really tired, he would ramble on and on about whatever came to his mind until one of us fell asleep and the other hung up. I would just lie there listening to him talk, only half paying attention to what he was actually saying. Most of what I heard was just his voice. It was strange how distracting it was. Every word he said flowed perfectly into my ears in the soothing clarity of his accent, which I could only remember more vividly after we had met in person for the first time. The content feeling it gave me just to hear his voice relaxed my mind and settled my restless thoughts long enough to lull me to sleep. Remembering those perfect days had almost the same effect on me now, and I was so grateful to finally drift off to sleep.

I woke up in a peaceful haze. For the first time in a long time I was able to wake up without being too worried or angry. The haze wasn't from that, though. It was from the past few days in general. Everything was a blur. I was trying to help out a jerk that I didn't know for a reason I didn't understand, we were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and Jake was gone. But none of it felt real. It felt like I was going to get up and go play video games with Jake, or whatever people did when the world wasn't ending and you weren't dead.

At least I didn't feel stuck in Sburb. I was used to being back on Earth by now, but I wasn't used to it being overrun with zombies. To be honest, I hadn't seen anything resembling a human roaming the streets before. And now there were zombies. _Zombies._

 _What is my life coming to?_

I heard the door in the back creak open. Eridan was coming. I pushed myself up and put on my shades. He didn't say anything, but I heard footsteps. I followed the sound to the snack aisle where I found him staring at the shelves looking for breakfast.

"Hey."

He looked over at me. "I thought you would be gone by now."

"Good morning to you too."

He gave an irritated sigh and looked back at the shelf. I grabbed a bag of Doritos and tore it open.

"So are you sure you don't want to come with me?" I asked.

"Yeah."

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to leave him behind, but I couldn't think of any way to make him come. He was too stubborn, and I was fed up with it.

"Don't you ever get tired of being alone?" I asked without thinking. I knew the moment I said it that I had struck a nerve, but it was too late.

He clenched his fists. "Don't you ever get tired of talking?"

"Hey, I'm not usually this social. I'm just trying to be nice and keep you from dying, and _someone_ has to keep up the conversation!"

"There doesn't have to _be_ a conversation"

"What's your problem?!"

"What's _your_ problem? It's not like you have any reason to stick around, but you just won't leave me alone!"

"I'm trying to save your life! Can't you just stop being a moody twelve-year-old for _five seconds_ so you can see that you need help?!"

"Why do you even care about me?!"

"I don't!" I shouted. "I don't care about you; I care about _people_! I just don't want another _person_ to die! And I _thought_ you counted as another person, but apparently you don't have the logic or feelings to function as one, so forget that!"

He looked a little hurt, but I didn't give him the chance to defend himself. "Fine, I'll leave! Have fun with your stubbornness and isolation, try not to die!" I shouted, walking away and throwing some things into my backpack silently. As I walked towards the front of the store, I could hear the door to upstairs slam shut again. I felt guilty leaving him, but I knew it was a lost cause.

 _You can't save everyone._

But that was the thing. I hadn't saved _anyone_. Everyone I had seen since waking up here had been doomed. I failed Jake, and I wanted to get everyone else to safety to make up for it. I guessed that wasn't going to happen. But I could at least help _someone_ , right? I _had_ to, and I wouldn't rest until I felt like I had made a difference big enough to substitute for what I couldn't do for Jake.


	15. Chapter 15

**Dave**

"Just climb over!" Terezi called as I leaned against the gate. John, Jade and I had been talking to her through it since we reached the stone wall surrounding a huge building that she said the trolls had woken up in. We had been wandering around looking for survivors like we had been doing for days and days, drenched from rain and covered in dirt and blood, when we finally saw the building and thought it would make as good refuge. We had no idea it would already be full of people, but we weren't complaining.

"Okay!" John agreed. He jumped onto the gate and started climbing it.

Jade started to speak. "Careful John, it's still-" Before she could finish, John's foot slipped halfway up, and he fell down, hitting the pavement with a thud.

"...wet."

She ran to his side. "Are you okay?!" He sat up slowly and groaned.

"Yeah I'm fine," he said, getting to his feet. "But I don't know how we're going to get over."

Well I knew how _I_ was going to get over. I had to make it to the building. I had to find K- I mean… I had to get the others to safety. "We can still climb over, you just have to be careful," I said. The gate rattled as I jumped onto it, and I climbed over it slowly, making sure every step was secure before I put my weight onto it. When I reached the top, I didn't bother to climb down the other side, I just jumped down and stuck the landing.

They stared at me through the gate. "Gymnastics." I shrugged. They just shook their heads and followed my lead. When we were finally all inside, we began to walk across the parking lot to the hotel.

I quickly noticed John was limping a little. "Are you sure you're okay?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I just fell on my leg. I'll be fine," he insisted.

When we reached the hotel we were greeted by six of the trolls. I scanned the group to find Karkat, but the only ones there were Sollux, Aradia, Nepeta, Equius, Kanaya, Vriska, and Feferi. He wasn't dead… was he?

The trolls showed us around the building. They had set up a makeshift hospital in the offices on the lower floor, and had a cafeteria with what seemed like more food than they knew what to do with. We each picked a room on the second floor and dropped off our bags before heading back down to the cafeteria for the biggest meal we'd had in days (even though it was pretty much just a sandwich, a soda, and some chips).

"You guys really hit the jackpot with this place, didn't you?" Jade said through a mouthful of sandwich.

"Well considering the circumstances, I don't think our situation qualifies as lucky," Equius replied.

Nepeta was leaning against him, and would probably have pushed him off his chair by now if he wasn't so much bigger than her. "Where did you wake up?" she asked.

"Some apartment in the middle of town," John explained. "It barely had enough food for a day, and the place was practically falling apart. Once we left we basically just wandered around looking for food and survivors."

"Did you find any?" Vriska asked. She had been poking at her food disinterestedly, and didn't bother to look up until we mentioned survivors.

"One," Jade said. "We ran into Roxy, and she told us that her and Jane left Dirk and Jake at the place they woke up and went to a house just outside of town. She said she went to look for food but lost her map, so she stayed with us a while until we decided to split up, girls and boys. At some point I got separated from Rose and Roxy, and I ended up finding John and Dave again."

Now it was Kanaya's turn to have a sudden interest in the conversation. "So Rose is fine?"

"Probably. If I managed to stay alive on my own, I'm guessing she was fine traveling with Roxy. I don't know where they went though," Jade said. She _sounded_ like she knew what she was talking about, but none of us were really sure what happened to either of them.

There was a silence, so I decided to speak. "Where are the others?" I asked, hoping I didn't bring up some horrible incident where over half the trolls had died.

"Karkat and Tavros just went out to look for survivors," Terezi said. A weight lifted off of me that I didn't even realize was there. "They should be about an hour unless they find someone," she told me.

"Cool," I said. "I'm gonna go clean myself up. I'm still surprised that there's running water in a zombie apocalypse, now it's time to find out if the shock of being able to take a shower will give me a heart attack," I said sarcastically as I excused myself and walked upstairs to my room while the others kept talking. I had been worrying about Karkat for days without admitting it, and I was so excited to finally find out what he was doing this whole time.

A hot shower cleared my head. It sort of felt like I was back home in Texas, before I even met any of the trolls, even though my heart was still racing at the thought of being reunited with one of them. _Wow, that's cheesy._ I didn't want to feel that way about him. Everything that I ended up thinking because of it made me want to throw up. But ever since I figured out what exactly my feelings were towards him, I mostly gave up on trying to ignore them. Just thinking about seeing him after this long made me smile a little. It was a good thing I was alone instead of surrounded by the others that probably wouldn't leave me alone until I told them what I was thinking about that made me smile. They couldn't find out about our relationship. We decided not to tell anyone, although with how fast news seemed to travel between these people, they probably all knew by now.

I stayed in the shower until the water was freezing. If anyone complained, I would just tell them to fight me. My brother wasted water like that all the time, why couldn't I do it just once?

Unfortunately I didn't have any clean clothes to change into, so I had to put back on my bloodstained jeans and t-shirt. At least the blood didn't show up as much on the red fabric.

When I turned off the water and stepped into the steam-filled bathroom, I heard voices downstairs. I recognized them instantly. Tavros and Karkat were back. Karkat's voice was slowly getting louder as he walked up to my room.

I quickly grabbed my pants and was just pulling my shirt over my head when I heard a knock on my door. I slid on my shades and opened up the door to see Karkat standing there. A small smile forced its way onto my face. He seemed oddly different. His hair was messier than usual (if that was possible), and he just looked really tired. I wasn't sure if that was it though. Most of the difference was in the fact that I could see his arms for once underneath his t-shirt.

He stepped inside and I shut the door behind him and walked over to my bed to put on my shoes. "So you're finally here," I said. He just stood there silently with a strange look on his face. "I've been waiting for-" I was interrupted by him pulling me into a hug. I didn't know what to do. I had spent so much time thinking about seeing him again, but not nearly enough time thinking about what was actually going to happen when I did. And even if I had, this is _not_ what I would have expected.

"Are… you okay?" I asked.

"Shut up" he whispered, his voice raspy from yelling all the time.

I basically just stood there awkwardly for a minute until he finally let go. I assumed that I was supposed to just ignore that that ever happened. I sat down on the bed.

"So… how's… life?" I said.

"How do you think?" He responded sarcastically, finally breaking eye contact with the floor to look at me.

"Yeah same." I proceeded to tell him the same story that Jade and John had explained downstairs to the other trolls. He seemed to be listening, but he looked like he was personally offended by everything I was saying.

"I was worried that you guys weren't here with us, or… or that you were dead," I said. His expression was strange, a mix of worry and his usual anger. I caught a glimpse of a tear in the corner of his eye before he wiped it away quickly. _What happened to him?_ It looked like he kept trying to make eye contact with me, but obviously couldn't because of my shades. Was he trying to read my expression?

I reached my hand up to my shades to take them off, but something was stopping me. I wasn't sure exactly what it was, I just felt like it was wrong. I pushed them up and tried to end the silence.

"So what happened to you guys?"

He went back to being mad at everything and looked away. "Well we pretty much just woke up in this place and set up camp here. Eridan decided to ditch us on the first day like the idiot he is, and Gamzee…" he paused. "I don't want to talk about it."

 _Is that what's wrong?_ I made a mental note to see if any of the other trolls would tell me what happened to Gamzee. In the meantime, I tried to comfort him.

I grabbed his hand and smiled a little. "It's ok. I'm here now, and whatever happens, we can take it on together."

 _What's that supposed to mean?_

 _I don't know, you're the one that said it._

 _Well I don't know where it came from, it just sounded like the right thing to say!_

 _So you're just going to say a bunch of crap you heard from his stupid rom-coms until he feels better?_

 _I think so?_

 _Dave, you're talking to yourself again._

 _Shoot._

I stopped having a conversation with myself like a lunatic and looked for a sign that what I said had helped. I thought I saw him smile for a second, but he just stood up and slipped his hand out of mine.

"I need to eat something," he said, turning around and heading for the door. I couldn't believe what was going on. Usually he would be opening up to me a little or throwing something by now (usually throwing something). I had never seen him act so strange. Did he not trust me to know what happened?

As he reached for the doorknob I saw a piece of paper sticking out of his back pocket. "What's that?" I asked.

He turned around. "What's what?"

"In your pocket."

He reached into his pocket and froze. "Nothing", he said, and quickly opened up the door to leave.

"Karkat!"

"It's nothing!"

"Let me see!"

"There's nothing to see!" He tried to discreetly take it out of his pocket and crush it into a ball, but he was just being an idiot if he honestly thought I wouldn't notice. I walked over to him and tried to take it out of his hand.

"Dave stop it, it's nothing!"

After a minute I managed to wrestle the paper out of his hand and shut the door. He tried to grab it back, and I ran into the bathroom and locked the door, which quickly started shaking from him banging on it.

"Strider open the freaking door!"

I ignored him and unfolded the paper. It was a note from… his denizen?

"Strider!"

I couldn't believe what I was reading.

 _Knight of Blood-_

 _The following letter serves the purpose of restoring your memory of your meeting me, and will explain the events leading up to your chosen outcome of_ _The Choice_ _. Your unique decision was one that involved the removal of specific memories from you, your co-players, and players of two other sessions. Reading my account of_ _The Choice_ _will restore yours alone._

 _You arrived..._

I read the rest of the letter in silence.

"Strider I swear to-"

I pulled open the door. Karkat was standing there staring at me. He seemed to be expecting something.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

He was crying. He stepped backwards and sat back on the bed.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, pulling his legs up to his chest.

"This isn't your fault," I said.

"Yes it is! You read that, it literally said it was my fault! _I'm_ the one that screwed everything up and now we're stuck here! Everyone's going to _die_ and it's all because of me! This is just what always happens! I try to make something better and instead I make it ten times worse! Why do I even _try_?!"

"No-"

"SHUT UP! I don't want to have this conversation! I know you're mad at me, so if you don't mind I'm going to just leave now before you have to put up with me anymore!"

He stood up and headed for the door again without looking at me.

"I'm not mad at you," I said. It was true, but I'm not sure why. Anybody in their right mind would want to kill him for what he did, but for some reason I didn't. Maybe it was because he didn't mean to, or maybe it was because I just wanted him to be happy. Either way I knew it was true.

"Yeah right," he muttered angrily.

"I'm not, really! I just… we have to tell the others."

He stopped. "Don't you freaking dare! They'll kill me!"

"No they won't! They aren't going to kill you for telling them the answer to the question they've been asking since they woke up!"

"No- just- I'll… I'll tell them eventually, ok?! Just keep your mouth shut."

I didn't want to agree, but I sort of had to. Even though it was everyone's problem, it was mostly his. I knew he could fix it, but I wasn't sure if he would, and either way I wanted to help.

It wasn't an argument I wanted to end like this, but considering the fact that this is Karkat we're talking about, it could be called a successful conversation. At least he didn't throw anything this time.

 **A/N: Sorry this chapter is late! I was busy and also kind of lazy since uploading this requires rereading and editing it, and I didn't really have any motivation to do that since this chapter is really long and admittedly really bad. Also this is the most DaveKat in the whole fic. It gets mentioned a couple other times but that's it. As you can see I'm not good at writing DaveKat so I was considering taking this chapter out, but it's got some important stuff in it so I had to leave it in.**


	16. Chapter 16

**Jane**

 **2 days later**

Cold air drifted in front of my face as I stared into the fridge. A cheese stick, a can of soda, and an apple. I sighed. That meant I was going to have to go hunting soon if Roxy wasn't back in a couple days. In the meantime, I closed the fridge. I wanted to spare the little food that I had. After all, it hadn't been _that_ long since I ate last.

Luckily Roxy had taught me a lot about hunting and fighting before she left, so I wasn't that nervous. I had actually been practicing a lot, and I was pretty good if I may say so myself.

I lied down on the couch and closed my eyes. I figured it would be a good idea to go to sleep early so I had as much energy as possible to go hunting. It would take a couple of days to get to the closest forest unless I rushed it.

The only thing I was kind of worried about was what would happen if Dirk and Jake came here while I was away. It wasn't too much of a problem though, since it had been a while since we left them and we had pretty much given up. Maybe… maybe they never even woke up in the first place.

A couple hours later, I was woken by a loud banging at the door. I quickly got up and moved to the back of the house. This was nothing new, sometimes a zombie would come down our typically empty street and sense me here. I usually just moved as far away from the door as possible until it left.

Sure enough, the noise stopped a couple minutes later. I went back to the couch, but before I could sit down, I heard another noise. It sounded like glass breaking, and it was coming from… _upstairs_?

Now I started to panic. It couldn't have been a zombie. As far as I knew, they couldn't climb buildings. But whatever it was, it was definitely inside. I grabbed a gun off the table and walked upstairs slowly to investigate.

I could hear footsteps getting louder as I walked upstairs. I wasn't being too quiet in the first place, because the house was old and the stairs creaked under my every step.

When I reached the top I crept down the hallway and stood next to the doorframe of the room the sound was coming from. I turned quickly into the room, holding up my gun up in preparation for whatever was in front of me. But as soon as I saw what it was, I dropped my weapon.

Standing by the window and surrounded by shards of glass, was someone I had been waiting far too long to see.

 **A/N: Another short chapter, sorry.**


	17. Chapter 17

**Dirk**

"You know the polite thing to do is answer the door," I said to Jane, who was staring at me wide-eyed as I continued to wipe my bleeding hand on the satin curtain of the window. "This may surprise you, but punching through windows isn't actually my favorite thing to do."

She was speechless. I wanted to give her a hug, and I probably would have if I didn't think that would be weird. Luckily she spared me the awkwardness by coming over and hugging me herself.

"I thought you were dead!" she said when she pulled away. She was crying tears of joy and looked happier than I had ever seen her. I couldn't help but smile a little.

"Well I'm honestly not sure how I'm not," I said. She laughed. "Sorry I took so long."

"Roxy and I were worried that you weren't coming! We felt so bad leaving you there, but we kind of had to. And a couple days after getting here, we sort of gave up," she said. Her grin was slowly turning into a half-hearted smile, like something was bothering her. My guess was she wanted to ask about Jake, but was too scared to hear the answer.

"Where _is_ Roxy?" I asked. Her face clouded over and her smile disappeared.

 _Oh no._

"She… left to go hunting about a week ago… and she hasn't come back."

I sighed. _Great, more dead friends._

Somehow she could tell what I was thinking. "Don't worry, she's probably still alive! She might just be lost; you know how she is with directions!"

I wasn't going to listen to her trying to make me feel better. The last time I tried to deny death it just made everything worse.

"Don't bother with the optimism crap," I muttered.

Suddenly her sadness was replaced by fear. "What are you talking about?!"

"You know she's gone; you just don't want to admit it."

"We have no reason to believe that! Unless we see her dead we don't know for sure that it happened."

"Whatever," I said. I didn't want to have this argument. I knew she couldn't change my mind and I knew I couldn't stop her from trying. I had so relieved to finally make it to the house after all this time. I felt like everything was going to be okay. Now I just felt stupid for thinking that. I should have known everything would only get worse.

I leaned against the wall without saying another word. After a couple moments she finally worked up the courage to say what she had been wanting to say.

"Where's Jake?" she asked nervously. I cringed before I could stop myself and looked at the floor. I didn't know what to say, but apparently that was all the confirmation Jane needed to know that something had gone horribly wrong.

I didn't want to deal with this now. I shrugged, fidgeting with the straps on my backpack as I walked past her out the door.

As I turned and headed down the stairs, Jane shouted after me. "Where are you _going_!?" I didn't answer or turn around. "What happened to him?!" she cried out as I descended. My hand gripped the banister harder, my mind shutting down from the pain of her words bringing back a tidal wave of memories.

 _She can tell what happened. I don't know why she's trying to make me say it._

"Stop," I muttered, glancing behind me.

Immediately her face paled and her voice shook as she asked again, very quietly this time, "Dirk. _Where is Jake?_ "

I stopped. I might as well tell her, maybe if I did she would stop asking.

"He's dead."

I didn't turn around to look at her, but I could tell she was in shock. I paused for a moment to see if she would say anything else. When she didn't, I started to go back downstairs, but before I could she spoke again.

"D-dead or missing?" she asked.

Of course. Of course she wasn't going to believe me. There was no reason for her not to, but apparently life just wanted me to have to relive this over and over and over again. Talking about it was the least thing I wanted to do right now, but the story came spilling out anyway.

"We got split up on our way to the second store. He got pushed into the woods and I waited for him when I got there." That was when I realized that my free hand was clenched into a fist, my nails digging deeper into my hand with every word I bitterly spat out. "He came back covered in blood with a bite in his shoulder. Then he ran back the way he came so I wouldn't have to kill him when he died."

Silence.

"I saw the bite, Jane. _He's_ _dead_."

That was when I could hear her crying. But I didn't know how to console her, and I don't think I would have even if I did. Hearing her deal with her own pain only made mine seem more real. I walked downstairs quickly and went into the kitchen.

"Dirk!"

"What now?!" I grunted as I heaved my backpack up onto the kitchen table and began to unpack it.

"You can't just tell me something that horrible and walk away!"

 _Oh for crying out loud._ "Well what do you want me to say?!" I went over to put some water bottles in the fridge and found out that she was running low on food. _Great._

"I- I don't know!"

"Then there's nothing for me to say"

She was sobbing. I did feel bad for not trying to help her, but like I said before, I really couldn't.

"Just because you're upset about Jake doesn't mean you have to take it out on me!"

"I'm not!" I shouted. "Maybe I just need some alone time or whatever."

"You've been alone for days! If you didn't want to see me you shouldn't have come!"

She was taking this all wrong. Then again, I wasn't really expressing myself properly. But I didn't care. "Maybe I shouldn't have," I said under my breath, but she heard me.

"What?"

"Nothing!" I had a headache and all I wanted now was the opposite of what I had come here for.

"Dirk!"

"Just _shut up_!"

She didn't respond. Instead she turned around and went to the living room. "I'm going to bed," she said, letting the kitchen door swing shut behind her.

My headache was only getting worse. My mind was spinning with a mixture of anger, sadness, and guilt. The obvious thing to do would have been to go to sleep too, but after the past couple of nights I didn't dare to so much as close my eyes. It wasn't until around 4 a.m. that I finally fell asleep.

 **A/N: And now we start to wish that someone would just slap Dirk in the face already.**


	18. Chapter 18

**Jane**

It took me a couple minutes in the morning to remember what happened the day before. When I finally did, I wasn't sure I wanted to. Was it better to know that Jake was dead or be left to guess? And Dirk… I wanted to punch him in the face. He didn't take the news about Roxy in a way that any normal person would, he just seemed to dismiss it as the world being out to get him. And when I asked him about Jake he was even worse. It was like he didn't think anybody else cared about them except for him.

 _Maybe he left when I went to bed_ , I hoped. Either way, I had to go hunting today. The woods where Roxy went hunting wasn't _too_ far, it would take me about a day to get there if I hurried. It would be worth it, and maybe she was alive and I would find her. I just hoped that I wouldn't have to drag Dirk along with me. There was no room for more negative thinking in our situation.

But sure enough, when I left the living room and went into the kitchen to grab my supplies I saw him lying across the table staring at the ceiling and picking at his nails. At the sound of the door swinging open he sat up to look at me with a look on his face like nothing was wrong.

"Hey," he said.

I couldn't believe him. After all that, he was just going to greet me with "hey" as if it never even happened? I pretended not to notice him and went over to grab my backpack from next to the counter.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he said, looking slightly disappointed by my attitude. At least he was acknowledging what happened, but I was still mad at him. I wasn't sure what happened to him between the time we woke up and now, but I knew for sure that he wasn't the same person I was friends with before. Whoever this person was, I wanted nothing to do with him.

"Sorry doesn't cut it," I muttered. He slid off the table and walked over to me.

"I know, I just…" he trailed off. I turned around and glared at him, waiting for him to say something else.

"You just what?" I finally asked impatiently.

"I don't know."

Of course.

"You're going to have to come up with a much better argument than that" I said.

I don't know what I was expecting him to say. He was never the kind of guy who would talk openly about his feelings.

"I… I don't really have an explanation for what I said yesterday, okay? I guess I was just tired… and angry… and… I didn't mean it." He was having a hard time coming up with an excuse, and I wasn't surprised.

"I was upset, and not only did you do nothing about it, you made it ten times worse!"

"I know, it's all my fault, and I'm sorry."

"You bet it's your fault!" I shouted.

"I know, if I made it here sooner, maybe Roxy would still be alive, and-"

"You're doing it again! _For god's sake_ Dirk, that isn't even what I was talking about!"

"You don't have to forgive me. It's probably better that way. I don't even think I would forgive myself."

Now I felt a little bit guilty. It was hard to tell if he was being sincere or if he just wanted me to stop being mad at him so he would have someone to talk to. I couldn't tell which it was, but it was too early in the morning to be dealing with this. I went back to packing my bag.

"Anyway, where are you going?" he asked.

"Hunting. In case you haven't noticed, the fridge is almost empty," I said before instantly regretting it. I should have lied to him. Now he was going to want to come.

"Why can't we just go raid some houses?" He asked.

I looked at him sideways. "Have you tried raiding houses before?" I asked. He shook his head. "Well there's nothing there. It's kind of like a videogame; there's places you can go, but there won't be any loot there because you aren't supposed to go there." I tried to explain.

"What do you mean we aren't _supposed to go there_?" He asked. "We're out of the game, isn't all this destiny crap supposed to be over?"

I shrugged. "That's what I thought, but now I'm not sure". That was really the best explanation I could come up with.

He sighed. "Well I'll get my bag packed and we can get going," he said.

" _We_ aren't going anywhere. You're not leaving this house until you fix your attitude." I know I sounded like I could be his mom, but it was what I was honestly thinking.

He looked so done. Then again, he did seem fed up with pretty much everything since he got here. "Can't you see I'm trying?"

He could try a lot harder. "Besides, you just spent like a week out there, you should rest. How much sleep did you even get last night?"

"Maybe like an hour or two."

"Dirk!"

"I'm coming with you and there's nothing you can do about it." He grabbed his backpack and threw one of the water bottles from the fridge inside. Now I didn't want him coming with me just because I was worried about him. How had he not been sleeping? That's when it occurred to me that maybe all his negativity was from sleep deprivation.

"Dirk no! You're staying here and getting some sleep!"

"Nope."

"Dirk, for crying out loud, you're going to die!"

"Nope."

"This is for your own good, please!"

"Nope."

The conversation basically continued back and forth like that until he slung his backpack onto his shoulder, pulled a map out of his pocket, and pointed out a route to the closest forest.

"This way?"

I was done arguing with him. Most of the time he knew what had to be done and did it, but he was also the most stubborn guy I'd ever met. If he passed out in the middle of the street, that was his fault. I grabbed my bag. "Yeah," I sighed.

"Great. Let's go" he grabbed his katana and went out the door.


	19. Chapter 19

**Dirk**

The street was mostly empty, so I ran down it quickly without stopping. As I turned the corner I could hear Jane shouting after me.

I still couldn't tell if she was mad at me or felt bad for me. I was trying to apologize to her, but she wouldn't take it. I would admit that I wasn't as sorry as she probably wanted me to be, but she was still being totally unreasonable.

When I told her that I hadn't been getting enough sleep, she actually seemed to care. It made me wonder if she was mad at me or my actions. She sounded like she actually wanted to make sure I stayed healthy. At least she didn't try to ask _why_ I wasn't sleeping.

Part of me thought I was being stupid. Maybe Jane was right. Maybe I _was_ the one who didn't know how to cope with death, and her optimism was what we needed to keep going. That all seemed like it made more sense, and that was what I would be saying too before all of this happened. But my judgement was still clouded by a storm of emotions that I was withholding as usual. It was like hope was right in front of me but I didn't know it was there.

Every time I tried to push it away everything just became worse. The only thing that would fix this is for it to have never happened. But we weren't playing Sburb anymore. There was no more time shenanigans, no more convenient resurrection opportunities. The end was the end. And I was stuck trying to find a way to be ok with that.

A crowd of zombies was waiting just a little bit down the street. I looked back to make sure Jane was ok, then ran right towards it.

I hadn't realized until then, but I felt better when I was fighting. I had to focus when I was fighting, and it made my mind concentrate on something other than the last few days. And even if a bad memory did manage to get to me, it just made me put more power into my attacks. I knew that it wasn't helping me at all to use fighting to deal with my problems, but I still felt better doing it. Not to mention the fact that it's impossible to fight off a whole crowd of zombies by yourself without feeling like a badass.

After a couple minutes, Jane caught up and I could hear her taking out zombies behind me. I was a little bit nervous only because I had no idea if she would be able to defend herself well enough. But to my surprise, she turned out to be one of the best fighters I had ever seen.

Once I got out of the crowd, I had so much adrenaline built up that I wanted to keep running right away and find the next one. That was what I had been doing on my way to find Jane and Roxy. But I managed to stop myself and wait at the edge for her, since she was already mad at me. She came out panting and covered in blood but without a scratch.

"You're pretty good," I said, stabbing one last zombie before backing away from the crowd and turning around to follow Jane down the street.

"Thanks," she muttered.

Oh great, she was going to ignore me. This was like Eridan all over again, except this time I had actually done something wrong.

"Don't run ahead again," she said.

I nodded. "Sorry." She didn't seem to want to hear it.

The rest of the trip was pretty awkward. We fought through seven more hordes barely saying a word to each other, although I was satisfied enough just having someone to fight beside again. It wasn't until after the sixth that she seemed to want to acknowledge my existence again.

"Maybe we should call it a day," she suggested. "There's a lot more out here than usual."

"No." My whole body was sore and I had a cut on my arm that really needed to be looked at, but I couldn't stop now. We were only about halfway there.

"Dirk come on! I'm exhausted, and you must be way worse if you haven't been sleeping! We aren't in that much of a hurry, there's definitely enough time for a break," she pleaded. I knew she was right, but I just wanted to reach the forest and get this over with. I shook my head and started walking faster down the street.

"Dirk you need to rest!" _Oh hell no,_ I wanted to laugh in her face. _I am never going to sleep ever again._ I took off running all the way to the next block and right up to another mob of zombies. "Dirk!" I blocked out her voice and started pushing my way through. It wasn't too bad at the start, but Jane was right as usual: I was _really_ tired. After making my way halfway to the other side, I stumbled over a dead zombie on the ground and fell, smacking my head into the wall of a nearby restaurant. Before I could push myself up, there was one right on top of me.

My katana haven fallen out of reach, I tried to wrestle it away but couldn't. It grabbed for my face. My head hurt really badly and my arms were burning with pain from trying to shove it off. Somehow it was stronger than me. _This is it. This is how I'm going to die._

 _BANG_

The zombie took a bullet to the head and fell to the ground limply beside me. I quickly jumped up and grabbed my sword to see Jane standing there with her gun firing at all the others around us. She grabbed my good arm and dragged me out of the crowd, clearing the way with her pistol.

She didn't let me go until we were far from the mob. "Are you okay?" she asked.

My head pounding from hitting the wall, I reached up to push up my shades. When I put my hand down it was dripping with blood. "Crap, am I bleeding?"

"Yeah you're bleeding, you idiot! I told you not to run in there, you almost died!"

"Sorry." I apologized for the third time today.

" _Now_ can we take a break?!" she asked impatiently, although I could tell that even if I said no she would have grabbed me by the hair and dragged me inside. No way was I letting her mess up my hair.

I was ready to agree anyway. I was already feeling lightheaded. "Yeah."

 **A/N: This chapter would have been a _lot_ longer, but I split it up. The next chapter still may be the longest chapter in the whole story. Trust me, between the length of that chapter and what happens in it, it's gonna be real fun to read *evil grin***


	20. Chapter 20

**Dirk**

We went into the closest house we could find. The first thing we did when we got inside was check the fridge. Nothing.

"Go clean up your cuts," Jane said.

I dropped my backpack onto the couch with a sigh that probably ticked her off even more and found the bathroom. When I did, I quickly started scrubbing the blood off of my arm. The cut didn't look nearly as bad afterwards, and I was about to leave and get something to wrap it when I remembered my head.

I looked up at the mirror. "OH CRAP!" I shouted. Blood was trickling down the side of my face. I had no idea where it was coming from.

Jane came running in quickly but paused when she saw me wiping it off. "Yeah I told you, you're an idiot," she said, "How did that even happen?"

"I don't know; I guess I hit my head when I fell." I shrugged.

"Oh my god Dirk, you might have a concussion!" she said. I hadn't thought about that, but it did make sense. "I don't care what you say, you're going to go rest right now!"

"I'm fine," I insisted. My head was killing me, but the bleeding was stopping and I didn't want Jane to get even more annoyed, so I washed my hands and pushed past her into the hallway.

"Dirk, no!" she grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me upstairs to a bedroom. I tried to resist, but I was feeling too weak so all I could do was complain as she shoved me inside against my will and locked the door behind me.

"Jane, what the heck?!" I shouted, but she didn't answer. She must have gone back downstairs. I probably would have just tried to kick the door down or something, but I was too tired. I knew she was right, I really needed to go to sleep. But of course, that was exactly what I _wasn't_ going to do.

I turned on the lamp by the bed and closed the curtains. I was sick of seeing the streets full of undead. It was just depressing, especially when I was too far away to do anything about it.

I sat on the bed and looked around the room. It was painted a dark blue and covered in movie posters. It looked like it once belonged to a boy around my age. I laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. It only took me a couple seconds to realize that I was going to be _really_ bored until she let me out. And of course when I got bored, I started thinking. And when I started thinking, I got upset. _Well crap._

"Jaaaaaaaaaaaane open the doooooooor!" I groaned loudly.

All I heard was a muffled "No!" from downstairs.

"I'm gonna fight you!"

"That's nice, sweetie."

I rolled over to the wrong side of the bed and banged my head on the nightstand. "Ow!"

"I told you to stop being an idiot!"

"Never," I mumbled. I sat up to touch my forehead and make sure I wasn't bleeding again. Suddenly something bright flashed into my eyes. I cursed, falling off the bed. Grumbling now, I sat up slowly, holding my already pounding head and looking around for the source of my pain. I noticed then that the drawer to the nightstand had opened a crack and something was shining in the light from the lamp.

"What the hell is this?" I muttered, now furious at an unidentified inanimate object. I yanked open the drawer and grabbed it. It was a little silver MP3 player with a pair of earbuds plugged in. _So not worth it._

But bored out of my mind and curious to see what was on it, I put in the earbuds and lied back down on the bed. Not bothering to check what it was, I pressed play on whatever the owner of the MP3 player was listening to last.

 _"_ _This is gospel_

 _For the fallen ones-"_

"Really?!" I thought out loud. Whatever; at least this person had good taste in music. I was too lazy to change it, and I knew I was going to be depressed no matter what I was listening to. I sat up and continued listening to song after song, even though almost all of them had lyrics that made me want to punch something.

Suddenly, the music cut out and was replaced with a loud buzzing sound. I looked at the player. It _said_ it was still playing. It must have been broken.

Just when I was about to take out the earbuds, I heard something. "Dirk!" Was that… Jake? I looked around in panic. There was nothing there. It was coming from the MP3 player! _What the hell?!_

Suddenly I saw a flash of light. The room around me was glowing blue. "Dirk!" Everything was becoming transparent, even me. I was terrified. I wanted to scream, run out of the room, something. But I couldn't move. The buzzing in my ears grew louder and all I could hear was Jake's voice shouting my name over and over again. The ghost shapes of the objects around me were blurring.

I blinked. My vision was clearing up, but everything was still transparent and now starting to look pixelated. I squinted to see that they weren't actually pixels, they were binary units floating in place to form my surroundings.

"Dirk!" I heard one more time before there was another flash of light.

I could see normally again, but I wasn't in the bedroom anymore. I was in the street outside the research facility we had woke up in, staring down it at the first horde of zombies we had faced.

I looked to my left and saw Jake standing there holding his pistols and waiting for me to run down the street. His clothes were clean and unripped, and he didn't have any of the cuts and scratches he had the last time I saw him. This must have been the day we left. Without bothering to wonder how this could be possible, I opened my mouth to say something- to him tell him to turn back, tell him I was sorry for letting him down-

Another flash of light.

I was sitting on a counter in a CVS. My shirt was bloodstained again and my katana was leaning against a window. Jake was nowhere in sight. Was this after he left? Suddenly I heard him scream from outside. It must have been when he was coming back from the forest. I got up to go see what was going on, but before I could reach the door there was another flash of light.

I was sitting on the floor of the CVS. I gasped when I looked to my left and saw Jake sitting next to me. He was leaning against the wall covered in cuts and bruises… And a bite in his shoulder. _No,_ I thought, _this is when he leaves_. I tried to run away, but I couldn't move. I needed to do something, anything, to get away from having to relive this again. It had been going through my head over and over for days, but this was worse. It felt real. It felt like it was _actually_ happening all over again.

He looked up at me and I could feel my heart racing and my breathing becoming heavy.

 _Don't say anything Jake. Don't_. His big emerald eyes were shaking behind his cracked glasses. This memory had played over in my mind so many times that I knew it by heart now. I knew this moment, and I knew exactly what he was about to say, and I couldn't do anything to stop him from saying it.

"Dirk..."

 _No. No!_ I wanted to scream. I had to do something to end this, but all I could do was sit there staring into his petrified eyes that reflected back all the pain and suffering I was feeling. I had to get away. I couldn't bear to see his eyes again, the same eyes I used to be unable to look away from.

"Dirk... You'll..."

 _STOP!_

"You'll kill me, right?"

My heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to explode out of my chest. I wanted to see him again _so bad_ , but not like this. I never wanted to see him like this. I _couldn't_ see him like this. And I definitely didn't want to have to hear that from him again. It was one of the many things from that day that had been replaying over and over in my head ever since, but it was so much worse being there again, seeing him in pain, hearing him say those words in his own voice.

 _No! No I can't kill you! I can't kill you and you can't die! Shut UP! I can't take this anymore! You can't leave again! I can't- I can't live without you!_

But he couldn't hear me, because I couldn't speak. I was just watching him helplessly, knowing that even if I could speak, whatever I said wouldn't be enough to save him.

Another flash of light.

I was back outside, but I was in an alley with my shoulder pressed up against a cold brick wall. My hands were raised and there was a gun pointed at my head. Eridan. _Oh no, Not now_. I was still shaking from the last hallucination and having to deal with this jerk again was the last thing I wanted to do. I was too shocked to move, not that I thought I would be able to. Jake's words were still stuck on repeat in my head.

The look of pure disgust on Eridan's face wasn't helping. All it did was put a thought into my head that I never wanted to think: _He_ should have been the one to die. I pushed it away to join the pile of other things I wanted to forget and tried to focus on the situation at hand.

I just needed to calm down. This wasn't _too_ bad of a memory. It was nothing like the last one, and I couldn't imagine anything worse.

"If you don't leave right now, I swear I will kill you," he said. I could see his finger itching to pull the trigger, but I didn't care. I knew he wasn't going to do it, and even if he did, obviously none of this was real. Besides, I had much worse things to worry about.

Finally, another flash of light.

Suddenly I was in an unfamiliar room, standing next to a dining table looking out a big window into the zombie-infested street. I looked around and analyzed my surroundings to try and figure out where I was. The room had wood floors, cream-colored walls, and a china cabinet against one wall. I could see a kitchen through a doorway on the other side, but I couldn't recognize it either.

Jake and Roxy were standing nearby talking to me, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. The whole thing was blurry and unclear.

 _What?_ Everything else I had seen had been memories, but this was completely new.

I didn't get a chance to figure out what was going on or where I was though, because I was only there for a couple seconds before there was another flash of light.

I found myself in an empty room surrounded by a group of both trolls and humans. I didn't really know which trolls they were; I never really paid that much attention to them in the past to be honest.

Suddenly I heard a familiar voice behind me. "Guys…" We all turned around to see Dave leaning against the wall away from the rest of us.

My eyes widened in horror and pain suddenly shot through my head.

Dave's shirt was completely covered in blood. _What is this?!_ I thought, frozen in shock. _How did this happen?!_ Dave winced in visible pain, stumbling a bit as he pushed himself off of the wall. That's when I saw it: a bite in his left shoulder, still dripping blood down to his fingertips even though it must have been hours since it happened.

 _No. No, no, not again._ He made a choking sound and began coughing. I heard Karkat start towards him, but one of the other trolls grabbed him and pulled him back. "You'll only get yourself hurt," she said, not seeming to care at all about what was going on.

Dave fell to the floor. I couldn't take this anymore. I was so overwhelmed I felt like my head was splitting open. I didn't even know what was going on; all I knew was that Dave was dying, and I couldn't handle it. He couldn't stop coughing. Everyone was just standing there in shock.

Blood was everywhere. It dripped down to his neck from a wound in his head. It smeared across the white painted wall he had been leaning on. A slowly growing crimson puddle of it was forming around him.

 _Stop_ , I thought nervously. My breathing was getting to the point where I was wondering how I was still alive, but nobody seemed to notice. I wanted to grab my head in agony. Tears were running down my cheeks, but my mind was almost completely shutting down so I didn't care. _MAKE IT STOP!_

I couldn't close my eyes. I couldn't run away. All I could do was stand by and watch my brother, bitten and bleeding to death on the floor. _STOP!_

I screamed, suddenly able to move again. There was another flash of light, but I was still in the room. It was slowly fading into something like the blue binary ghost figures I had seen before, only his was turning red. It didn't do anything to help, and it only made my head hurt more.

I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears to block out the constant sound of Dave's coughing and hopefully ease the torturous pain in my head. It did nothing. I dropped to my knees, still holding my head in my hands and crying. Suddenly I felt something in my ears. The earbuds. I ripped them out-

Everything was finally silent. All I could hear was my own panicked gasping for breath. I cautiously opened my eyes to find myself panting on the floor next to the bed holding the MP3 player. Instinctively I jumped up and chucked it across the room at the window. It cracked the glass and then dissolved in a blue light, which didn't surprise me much after what I had just seen.

Was it a dream? No, it couldn't be. It was too lucid to be a dream, and I wouldn't have woken up here like I did.

"Dirk!" Jane yelled from downstairs. I didn't hear her. I was too busy grasping my pounding head trying to steady my breathing and process what had happened.

 _It was nothing_ , I told myself. _I just imagined it._ That was the only explanation. I was obviously going insane. I was hallucinating. This was what I got for not sleeping and then banging my head against a brick wall. Right? _It wasn't real_.

But it felt real. It wasn't like the nightmares I had been having, but it was somehow way worse. It didn't have the hazy quality of a dream. Everything was crystal clear and sharp enough to pierce through my head and shatter the leftover fragments of my sanity.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw Dave's death. The all-too-familiar sight of a zombie bite, his legs giving out when he tried to stand. The blood. So much blood. It was like the images were burned into my eyelids.

"Dirk!" I snapped out of it when I heard Jane running up the stairs.

 _Oh crap._ I couldn't let her know what was going on. If I told her I was going crazy she would just tell me to get more sleep, and facing the nightmares again was the last thing I needed right now. I jumped onto the bed and rubbed my face into the pillow to wipe off my tears.

 **A/N: I think I should apologize for writing this chapter. Sorry.**


	21. Chapter 21

**A/N: This chapter was written by my friend. So… I can't take credit for it apart from the editing. And once again I'm sorry for that last chapter (although I should warn you it may or may not get a lot worse).**

 **Jane**

I knew the moment I had locked the door that Dirk wasn't going to sleep. Still, I had hoped that he would at least rest a little, what with being in an _empty room_ and all, but _noooo_ , he just _had_ to keep being stubborn at the expense of his own health like the idiot he so obviously was _._

I had been organizing my bag and looking through the cabinets in the kitchen (even though I knew they'd be empty anyways), when I heard a shout and a loud noise from upstairs that sounded eerily similar to a breaking window. I jumped and yelled, "Dirk!" There was no response.

I growled in aggravation, running up the stairs and calling out to him again as I went. No response again. I was getting a bit concerned at this point. There was no limit to the bad things that could have happened to him. I unlocked the door quickly and barged in, not even bothering to knock. What I saw only made me angrier. The window had a jagged crack running from the center outward in spindly lines like a splintered sheet of ice. What was it with this boy and breaking glass?!

The room, though in slight disarray, seemed relatively fine. And then there was Dirk, draped haphazardly across the bed in a way which told me quite clearly that he had thrown himself into that position just moments before, with his face stuffed in a pillow. His head only lifted when, after spending a few moments in awkward silence, I cleared my throat in a way which clearly meant _'If you don't explain this_ right now _your life_ will _be in jeopardy'_ He looked shaken for some reason which sparked a bit of apprehension in the back of my mind. The feeling unfortunately was ignored and consumed entirely by my annoyed take on the present situation.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, I asked, "What exactly have you even been _doing_ in here? And _how_ did you break the window like that?"

Dirk paused for a moment in hesitation as though he were trying to come up with a valid response, finally saying, "I, ummm, tried to break the window, because… I was mad... and, ummm, it… didn't quite work all the way."

"Oh no," I said, "that is a _total lie_. You broke the window at the safehouse just fine!"

Now I was getting _extremely_ annoyed. He rolled off of the bed and the light coming from the bedside lamp was reflecting on his glasses for a moment before he turned his head, almost imperceptibly, and suddenly I could see just an outline of his eyes. They looked troubled and conflicted. I took a deep breath to calm myself. The rational part of my brain finally began to emerge.

 _Just give him another chance to answer; don't lose your head Jane._

"What _really_ happened Dirk?"

He looked like he was _so close_ to telling me, and his mouth opened slightly in anticipation. Suddenly he closed it and his face went neutral again as he shrugged noncommittally.

"I already to-"

I lost it.

"AAARRRGGGHHH!"

Dirk took a step back in shock, and to preserve his own safety as I snapped and screamed at the top of my lungs in absolute rage. Breathing deeply now and seeing red I yelled,

"WHY CAN'T YOU JUST TRUST ME!? I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T _DIE!_ "

He looked at least a _little_ ashamed at this and his mouth opened again as if to say something, but I didn't let him.

"I SWEAR! YOU'LL JUST BE A LIABILITY LIKE THIS!"

His mouth snapped closed and the shadow of his eyes looked conflicted and hurt. I paused, still breathing hard and clenching my fists now. We stood in silence for a moment, the only sound being my labored breathing. I stared intensely at his face and tried to get a better look at his eyes, which only made me more aggravated because it was practically impossible. Suddenly an insane thought drifted across my subconscious causing me to freeze completely and stare downwards. Breaking the silence, I muttered,

"I'll leave."

His eyes shot up to meet mine, now blazing behind his shades, and his face paled.

"W-what?" he stuttered out breathlessly.

"I will leave you here and go hunting on my own. Without sleep you won't be able to do anything. You'll just get us both killed."

I turned to leave, feeling a buzzing in my head. _What did I just_ say _? Even delirious he's a better fighter than you!_ I thought. My self-doubt was shadowed, however, by the strong urge to slap him and the rage that was now burning a cool fire inside my chest. But what surprised me most was... I had truly meant it. And Dirk knew it too.

"You can't!" he shouted from behind me.

I whirled around, glaring at him, and shot back,

"Why not!?"

He faltered, turning his head away so that he was presumably looking at the wall. Not that I could tell anymore since his eyes were now covered by his near-impenetrable shades once again. Just as quickly, he turned back to me and looked me straight in the eyes. In that moment my anger drained away and I knew I had gone too far. His eyes looked haunted.

"I….I can't lose another friend…." he choked, gritting his teeth in pain. "I can't lose you too."

My heart dropped to my feet and in its place was only cold. _I am such an idiot,_ I thought. Before he could say anything else, I ran forward and hugged him.

"I'm _so sorry_ Dirk. I didn't mean it, I was just mad. I know you've been through a lot and I wasn't thinking and _I'm so sorry._ I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…."

I was just babbling at this point. I could tell he was surprised at first, but slowly, tentatively, he hugged back. I pulled back quickly a moment later and attempted to hold him in front of me by the shoulders, but he was taller than me so I ended up just looking up at him. I tried looking him in the eyes once more to make sure he was okay, but once again the shades blocked my view. I sighed, trying my best to make some sort of eye contact.

"I really am sorry you know." I said.

He smirked a little which I took as a good sign.

"Well you only told me about fifty times."

I glanced away and muttered, "yeah, well I am." I paused. "I did mean what I said about you getting some sleep though. I know it must be hard for you. Heck, even _I_ have nightmares, though I'm sure they're nowhere near as bad as yours. I just….. I need you too you know: We might be all that's left and I don't want to lose another friend either. So…..could you please try to fall asleep?"

He still looked like a part of him wanted to argue, but he eventually nodded, walking over to the bed and lying down.

After I had made sure that he was in bed and had turned off the lamp I turned to head out. I hesitated by the door with my hand on the knob, debating whether to say one last thing. Before I could though, he did it for me.

"Goodnight Jane." He called hesitantly.

I jumped a little, then looked back. He was sitting up slightly and looked uncomfortable with the fact that he had said anything at all. But I smiled at him thinking, _I'm not going to lose anyone else. Not if I can help it._ All I did though was close the door, calling out as I left,

"Goodnight Dirk."


	22. Chapter 22

**Dirk**

When I woke up I needed a minute to compose myself and realize that what I had just dreamt wasn't real. It had been a while since I had last been asleep, but it felt like the nightmares had gotten worse. I guess after the whole episode with the MP3 player, I just had more images that my subconscious wanted to haunt me with. My subconscious is a jerk.

I rolled over and checked the clock on the nightstand. _2 a.m._ Was that enough? I _had_ gone to sleep really early, and I had woken up twice before. _No, go back to sleep_ , I told myself. But the thought of having to face my dreams for the fourth time in a row pushed me to sit up and put my shades back on. _Jane said to get enough sleep. Go back to sleep._ Great, now I was arguing with myself. I knew I had totally lost it

I sighed and walked over to the window to check that this wasn't all just some weird dream inside a dream thing. That was what I did whenever I woke up, just to humor the tiny bit of hope I still had left.

Sure enough, I drew back the curtain to see the same horrifying scene as before: the street crawling with undead. If this was all a nightmare, I wasn't waking up anytime soon.

I sat back on the bed. _What now?_ It would be hours before Jane woke up. And until she woke up the door would be locked. _Or would it?_

I walked over to the door and quietly turned the knob so Jane wouldn't hear me and wake up. To my surprise, it was open. She must have come in to check that I was asleep and forgot to lock it.

I walked slowly downstairs and into the kitchen. My bag and sword were right on the table where I left them. I unzipped my bag and drank half my water bottle while staring at the clock.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._ I counted the seconds.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

It was official: I was bored.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

It was starting to feel like the time was mocking me.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

Part of me wanted to grab my sword and go thin out the crowd of zombies. The rush of taking out twenty or thirty brain-dead monsters with nothing but a blade and my rage was just what I needed.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

I needed to do something. I was already going stir-crazy from waiting for Jane, and there was something actually helpful I could do right outside.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

But it was too dark. If I went out there now I would probably get myself killed, and then Jane would _really_ be mad at me. I had to admit I was scared of her.

I kept my eyes on the hands of the clock. Anxiety was building up inside me and I couldn't tell why.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

I glanced at my katana, then back at the clock. I could be killing zombies right now. I could be making myself useful instead of standing around and wasting time.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

Every second on that clock was another horrible creature I could be putting out of its misery.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

Every minute on that clock was another minute I could be spending trying to end all of this.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

Every _tick_ was another undead monster that needed to be destroyed.

 _TickTockTickTock._

Every _tock_ was another life that had been ended.

 _TickTockTickTock._

And one of them was Jake's.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock-_

 _Screw it._

I stood up, grabbed my katana from off the table and pushed open the front door. _I am such an idiot._

A couple hours later I came back inside. I dropped my stuff back on the table and sat on top of it. _Now what?_ I sprawled across the table and started memorizing the cracks in the ceiling.

"Dirk,"

I turned my head to the door and saw Jane standing in the doorway to the hall with her arms crossed glaring at me. I swore and fumbled to get off the table, instead flipping the whole thing over with me. My backpack slid off the table and my katana clattered to the floor next to me, just inches away from slicing my head off.

"I swear I was sleeping!" I said quickly, bracing myself for how much she was going to scream at me.

"I know," she said, stepping into the kitchen to put the table back up. "I checked on you a couple times before I went to bed." She held out a hand to help me up and I put everything that fell off the table back.

"Great, so we're all good," I said, leaning against the fridge. She raised an eyebrow. "What?" I asked. She glanced at the blood on my sword and then at my arm. I followed her gaze to see that I had a cut from when I went outside. _For crying out loud_. I shifted my arm behind my back, but that obviously didn't help anything. "Dirk, did you seriously go outside this early?!"

"You can't prove anything!"

She walked over to the door and opened it a crack. "I triple-locked the door last night, and now it's open. Either you went outside or a zombie decided to break down the door, borrow some sugar, and forgot to lock the door on the way out," she said sarcastically.

"Hey, on my way to meet you I _did_ see one hiding in a bakery eating a basket full of baguettes," I said.

"Dirk, I'm serious!"

"So am I!" I insisted. It _was_ true. "What an interesting story, let's talk about that instead."

"Stop trying to change the subject!"

"Alright, I went outside, happy?" I walked away from the fridge and sat down.

"No I'm not _happy_ , why would you do that?!"

"I got bored." I crossed my arms on the table and laid my chin on my hands.

"So when you get bored you make stupid decisions and want to go mass-murder zombies?"

"I'm a pretty messed up dude, I know." I laughed. I had meant it as a joke, but it was actually true when I thought about it. The idea didn't really bother me much though. After all, it was nothing new.

She must have taken it seriously. Shoot. There was a moment of awkward silence and then I saw her come up next to me and wrap her arms around me.

"Woah. Stop. What the heck are you doing?" I lightly tried to pull her off me.

"You looked like you needed a hug!"

 _Not again._

"Uuuugh," I groaned, "You've been acting like you're my mom or something."

"Well someone has to," she said.

I didn't know how to respond to that. I wasn't used to anyone caring about me in the way she had been. Before we met up I hadn't really been taking care of myself, and I just figured that if anyone _was_ around, they wouldn't have done anything about it. I guess I liked it that way. It was like I preferred to be sad and put myself at risk because of it. Like I said, I was a pretty messed up guy. Maybe I just spent so long thinking nobody cared that I stopped caring myself. But here was someone who cared. She was probably the only person still alive who did.

That was Jane's thing. She cared about everyone. Even before we played Sburb, she was the one who wanted to make sure everyone was okay and getting along. I guess I just hadn't noticed it that much until now. She put herself through so much for everyone else, even when it ended up blowing up in her face. It was just what she did. I could never do that. I just wasn't that kind of person. I might care about people, but I couldn't help them. I could only hurt them. After all, wasn't that why I was the Prince of Heart or whatever?

"Dirk?"

I snapped out of it. I didn't want to think about any of that right now. I pried Jane off of me and stood up. She seemed worried, and I couldn't look at her for much longer without feeling guilty. I didn't want her to think I didn't want her near me, but being around her just made me realize how much of a better person she was than me.

"I'll go clean up my arm. When are we leaving?" I asked.

"I guess in a few hours," she replied emptily. I knew I had made her upset. But I couldn't help that. At least we had sort of patched up things before. I stared at the floor to avoid making eye contact. She didn't say anything. After a couple more seconds of awkward silence, I gave up and left.


	23. Chapter 23

**Dirk**

A couple hours of pathetic attempts at conversation later, the sun had finally lit up the streets to a point where it would be safe enough to continue on to the forest. We ate what was left of our food and headed out.

But once we got through the first two crowds of zombies, we realized that we had a big problem.

"How are there so many?!" Jane shouted.

"I don't know; this is like twice as much as I saw earlier!"

We were barely getting any space to rest in between hordes of undead. Everywhere I turned there was another one lunging at me from who knows where. No matter how many I killed, more and more seemed to take their place. If this was some bizarre "what's supposed to happen" videogame crap, whoever was planning it _really_ wanted us to die.

"Jane!" I cried out before getting slammed into a brick wall. I looked up and saw a ladder leading to the roof, so I started fighting off more zombies as I inched my way to the left so I could grab it. Somehow I managed to climb on and wave to Jane halfway up the building.

By the time I reached the top I felt the ladder shake from Jane jumping on to it. I watched nervously over the edge to make sure she got up. "Are you okay?" I asked.

She bent over panting and squinted at me through the beams of sun that just happened to hit the exact place we were standing. "Yeah… just… wow," she said.

I sat at the edge of the building and swung my legs over the side as I watched the crowd of undead in the street below. I rested my katana on the cement behind me. "Hand me that?"

She held up her gun with a puzzled look on her face. I nodded and she walked over to give it to me. I pointed it at a zombie and pulled the trigger, watching it fall on top of the others around it. The crowd was so thick that I _had_ to hit _one_ of them.

I kept shooting while Jane asked me where we should go next. "Well we could probably try climbing buildings until we get to an alley that's too wide… Maybe there'll be less of them as we get closer to the forest," I said. She nodded and sat down next to me.

"We have time for a little break though first." She grabbed the gun from my hand and I let go.

"You know I could probably thin out the crowd a little if you would give that back."

She didn't respond. I knew what she was thinking though. She didn't want a break for herself, she just wanted to try and get me out of my habit of taking out my problems on the zombies, even though they literally _were_ the problem. I just sat there staring at the undead below, until Jane directed my vision towards the sky. "Stop focusing on everything you don't like," she said.

What did she want me to do, stare at the pretty clouds or something? "You're such an idealist," I said. But I guess I sort of understood what she was trying to say. Everything in the sky was so peaceful. The sun shone its shimmering rays through the clouds floating absentmindedly by and draped light on all the buildings faintly visible in the distance. It was like the complete opposite of what was going on down below. And right now I didn't really have a reason to be dwelling on that when all it brought me was agony and there was something so much better right in front of me.

"Call me whatever you want. The way I think works, and that's all that matters," she said.

"And what way is that?" I asked.

"Well, we both know that we can't just stop the zombie apocalypse. And there's a lot of things we can't stop in life, but we still manage to be happy anyway, right? So who says we can't do that with this? I figure there's good stuff and bad stuff around us all the time. And it doesn't matter how small the good stuff is, it can distract us from the bad stuff! So why not focus on the good stuff? All it will do is make us feel better. And if we feel better, we might even be able to hold up better against the bad stuff when we can't avoid it" she explained with a small smile.

"Huh." I stood up and walked in a circle to get a full view of the sky, pausing a moment to gaze at the still-visible moon behind me. "Maybe I'll try that."

Her face lit up. "Ready to go?" I asked. She gave me an annoyed look. "Just because I don't want to have to sit on a hot roof all day!" I added quickly. I didn't want her to think what she just said had gone to waste.

"Sure." She stood up and I grabbed my katana, this time not so eager to get fighting. "You better be serious, though. I don't know how much longer I can take you being so grumpy," she said.

"I'm getting there," I told her. And I really believed it. It would take a while, but maybe I could get over everything that had happened. And maybe if I could, everything would turn out okay.

But about an hour later, I found myself surrounded again with zombies pushing my aching body left and right as I persistently tried to fight them off. There should have been a pile of bodies building up around me, but instead every zombie I fought seemed to disappear once I turned my back and be replaced by another. Jane was too short to be seen above the crowd, but the sound of her shooting undead assured me that she was fine. I thought I heard more gunshots than could have come from one person, but I shrugged it off because I was too busy trying to save myself. Besides, it was probably nothing.

I was trying to get closer to the small gap between mobs that I had seen from the top of a building before we had to get down. But the more I fought, the more zombies appeared, and I was getting nowhere. They grabbed at me from every direction, and it took most of my energy to shove off the ones that were able to reach me instead of keeping them away from me in the first place. I was panicking. There was no way I could make it, I had to find some way inside.

I spotted a building that I thought we could get into, but I had to let Jane know. Wait… where was she? I suddenly realized that I wasn't hearing gunshots anymore. "Jane!" I called. No answer. _Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no…_

While I was distracted, a zombie slammed into me. I stumbled backwards into another one. It grabbed me by the back of my shirt, sending me down to the ground with it. I finally heard Jane's gunshots again, but by now I had far worse problems. I had to drop my katana to shove off the zombies clambering towards me, but it was barely working. I managed to get up to my knees, but one of them had my left arm locked in its abnormally strong grip and was practically crushing my wrist. I pulled forward and struggled to reach towards my katana so I could grab it and free myself, but before I could-

 _Crack._

Pain shot up my arm as I felt the bone in my wrist snap. A loud scream rang out through the street, and it took me a second to realize that it was mine. I could hear Jane shouting my name but all I could focus on was the immense pain in my hand. More zombies were coming at me. I managed to grab my katana so I could try to take them out, but I knew that if I tried to pull my hand away from the zombie behind me it would only hurt worse. It was pulling my arm up, and I fell limp knowing that struggling wouldn't do anything to help.

I finally managed to stand up and I was about to turn around and take care of the zombie holding me captive when I suddenly felt another searing pain just above my already broken wrist.

 _No._ I knew exactly what it was.

Nausea began creeping up the back of my throat. I tore my hand away from the zombie and fell to the ground again screaming in agony. The combined pain of my aching muscles and my wrist was too much. My vision was blurring. I kept hearing Jane shouting my name and something that sounded like… A chainsaw? But my brain didn't process it. I could no longer tell what was going on.

Zombies surrounded me and blood was everywhere. There was so much that I couldn't tell where I was bleeding from anymore. _This is it_ , I thought. _This time I'm really going to die._

Jane's voice was getting closer and closer. But it was too late. I had given up. Everything went black.

 **A/N: Well that happened. Now I realize that this is literally** _ **the worst**_ **chapter to go on hiatus after (and I already have every chapter after this written, so I would know), but I'm going to a convention this weekend so I won't be able to post. The next chapter should be up either Sunday or Monday (most likely Sunday).**


	24. Chapter 24

**Sollux**

I scanned the walls of the weapon storage room. I didn't know what to grab. Pretty much any weapon you could imagine was in that room. There were swords, guns, bows, and even some things that didn't even count as weapons but could probably be deadly if put in the right hands (Ever tried killing someone with a wooden spoon? Well, I wouldn't recommend it, but to each their own). But I had no idea what I was supposed to pick. I usually relied on my psiionics for battle, I wasn't used to using weapons. Now that none of us had any sort of powers anymore, what was I expected to do?

I ran my hand along the racks on the wall. If I had to use any of these things to fight zombies, I would definitely die. Suddenly a gun in the corner of the room caught my eye. All the others on the rack were silver or black, but this one was a light blue and seemed to be glowing. I walked over to it and picked it up.

It looked transparent. I turned it over in my hand, but it didn't feel solid. It felt like I was somehow holding something that wasn't there. _What?_

I squinted and saw that the part of the gun that I could actually see was made up of… _binary code?_ It was just like the dream I had the other day. Scared, I set it down on the table in the middle of the room and rubbed my eyes.

When I opened them, I was in even more shock. The whole room had turned into those blue hologram-like shapes. I stared in awe and looked around the room. I didn't know what was going on, but I wanted it to stop. It was giving me a headache. I glanced out the window to see that it was the same out there, and even the undead crawling through the streets had become ghosts.

Suddenly, a flash of light blinded me and I recoiled, squeezing my eyes shut. I reopened them to see the exact same scene as my dream. I was standing back-to-back with Aradia, shooting at a circle of zombies that kept crawling closer and closer. Sure enough, the very same events as in my dream began to unfold. Only I couldn't move aside from what I had done before. I was completely powerless against what was about to happen.

My surroundings turned into the all-too-familiar ghostly shapes. I tried to ignore it this time, and focus on keeping the zombies at bay. But I couldn't. I became overwhelmed by the surreal glitch-like movements of the crowd. I felt Aradia shaking me, and I wanted to call out to her; tell her to keep fighting and that I was fine. But no sound came out of my mouth.

My vision flashed and I was finally able to move again. The holographic figures faded back to normal, but I was still in whatever kind of intimidating hallucination this was that my brain had cooked up. It wasn't over yet, and I knew what I was about to do.

I turned to see the gap in the circle. Just before they could reach her, I grabbed Aradia and pushed her away from the zombies.

 _Now_ I was scared. This was the part where I woke up, but I wasn't waking up. The zombies closed in around me, grabbing at my skin from all directions. And I could _feel_ it. I tried to shove them away, but more and more kept flooding in. I heard Aradia screaming my name and trying to shoot her way back into the circle to save me. Suddenly an excruciating pain shot through my arm and I screamed. My hand instinctively shot up to cover it, but feeling the wound made me instantly nauseous. I held my hand up to my face and saw that it was dripping with dark yellow blood. _Oh my god._

Suddenly there was another flash of light. My pain instantly subsided, but I didn't know where I was. Everything was blurry, but I could make out that I was suspended in the air in some kind of glass box. Nothing was holding me up. Was I floating? I looked through the glass to see the blurred shapes of all my friends and the humans hovering a foot in the air in their own boxes, completely unconscious. We were all in a circle, each facing the center where there was another circle of three empty boxes.

Each person had a white, green, or red light turned on above their head. There was a panel on the inside of the box with a list: "White=Alive, Green=Infected, Red=Deceased". I quickly looked up to check the colors of the lights above my friends' heads, but before I could my vision flashed again.

I was back in the weaponry room. "No," I whispered. I needed to know if everyone was okay. What if that was some sort of vision of the future?

I didn't have enough time to worry, though, because all of a sudden Aradia came into the room. "Did you pick something yet?" she asked.

I snapped out of my panic and shook my head. "I have no clue what to do with any of these things," I admitted.

She sighed. "Just pick something already! We have to get going." She picked up the gun I had put on the table. It was no longer blue, and it looked just like the others on the rack I got it from. "Just use this or something," she said.

I hesitated for a moment before grabbing the pistol and adjusting my backpack on my shoulder. "Sure, let's go." I didn't want to tell her about what just happened. Either I was going crazy, or I had seen something that I didn't want to worry her with by telling her about it.


	25. Chapter 25

**Dirk**

 _Wake up._

My eyes snapped open and I took in a huge breath of air. The first thing I noticed was that basically every muscle in my body was either completely numb or in a lot of pain. The second thing I noticed was that I had no idea where I was.

I was in a bed in what looked like a hotel room. There was another bed to my left, covered in various medical supplies. Nobody was around, but the door was open a crack and I could faintly hear voices outside. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, but that just made everything ache more.

My wrist. I could barely feel it, but every time I moved it felt like someone was stabbing it repeatedly with a knife. I couldn't see why though, because it was bandaged along with my head, my shoulder, and part of my leg. But my wrist was the worst. The pain was worse than any other constant pain I'd ever felt, and it wasn't stopping. Apparently the bleeding wasn't stopping either. Unlike my other bandages which were completely clean with barely a speck of blood, this one was completely soaked in the stuff. I tried desperately to remember what happened, but the last thing I could remember was climbing down from the roof with Jane.

Speaking of Jane, I was finally hearing footsteps coming into the room. "Dirk?"

She walked in and froze when she saw me. She ran over to me and wrapped me in a tight hug, only loosening when I told her she was hurting my shoulder. "You're alive!" she squealed.

"Yeah I'm alive," I said. "But I have no idea how or what happened."

Her face quickly changed to a look of worry. "You don't remember anything?" she asked.

"I remember some things," I clarified. "I remember we were coming down from the rooftops to fight more zombies and then…" The rest was too fuzzy for me to make out. "I don't know."

She didn't look as scared, but it was obvious that she was about to say something she didn't want to tell me. "You got attacked pretty bad and passed out," she began. _Oh no, I know exactly where this is going._ "Equius, Nepeta, Kanaya, and Feferi found us and brought us back to where they woke up. They're here, and so are three of the betas. This is Dave's room; he said you could crash here. But… I think your wrist is broken and…" she trailed off.

"And what?" I demanded. She looked away from me and stared at the floor. _Oh no._ As I winced and prayed with every ounce of my being that I was wrong, I peeled back the top of my bandage.

But I was right. I had been bitten. Jane walked over to me, probably hoping to comfort me, but all I could do was sit there staring at what had gone wrong, my memories finally beginning to return. "Dirk-"

"How long has it been?" I interrupted, finally looking up to see her trying to hold back the tears in her eyes.

"About an hour and a half, but-"

"Jane, you'll ki-" I couldn't finish that sentence. All I could hear was Jake asking me to kill him, and I didn't want anyone to have to hear the same words come out of my mouth. I stood up, wincing a little bit from the pain in my leg. I would have to run away. I probably didn't have enough time, but I had to make it as far away from them as possible.

"Dirk, wait!" Jane said. I turned back to face her. "You were wrong. The trolls said two hours is the average time for the infection to spread to your brain. You have more like 24 hours before you… you know."

Great. Not only did I make a huge mistake before, I was going to have to endure the pain of slowly dying for a whole day. At least it gave me more time to get away. _Wait._

"Does that mean I could have saved Jake?" I asked. I was suddenly feeling even more swamped by guilt than before. I saw Jane's face cloud over as she realized what I was saying.

"It… it depends" she began quietly, "You said his bite was in his shoulder, right?" I nodded. "Well that's a lot closer to his head then yours is… it would have spread really quickly. It probably had by the time he met up with you."

She sounded sad, but I wasn't sure how to feel. I was upset by the confirmation that I couldn't have saved him, but relieved that it meant I didn't just miss the chance to. Was that wrong?

"Dirk… I'm sorry…" Jane said. But if she was going to say something after that, I didn't give her the chance. I suddenly had an idea. It wasn't a very good idea, but it was the best one I had.

"Jane, what kind of loot do the trolls have here?"

She looked confused. "Well it's mostly food, weapons, and medical supplies, but there's also a pile of robot parts that they kept finding and taking because they looked important. Why?" She asked.

Well if this was some kind of stupid video game destiny crap, it certainly made sense.

"Go get Equius and tell him to bring as many spare parts as he can find," I told her. I wasn't too excited to see that guy again, but hopefully he would be a little bit less unbearable when he wasn't partially me.

"What? Why?" She asked. I wasn't sure if she knew what I was going to do and just didn't want to believe it, or if she was really clueless. But it didn't matter, there wasn't a lot of time.

"Jane, please," I said, trying to avoid looking at her, "Just trust me."

I'm not sure why, but that seemed to work. She sighed and walked out of the room closing the door behind her. I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach, but I wasn't sure if it was from the bite or my nerves.

I decided to try to distract myself by preparing for Equius to come in. I grabbed a knife from the bed next to mine and got ready to do something that would either be really stupid, save my life, or both.


	26. Chapter 26

**Dirk**

"Now try the whole left hand," Equius said, his eyes glued to the tablet that had all the readings of what we had just taken a half hour perfecting.

I looked down at my newly built replacement hand. It was robotic, and some of the parts that were used didn't look like they were even going to work. That is, until we actually ended up using them to put it together. Now we were both pretty proud of our work. The metal ran all the way up to just below my elbow, where I had wrapped a leather band around it to cover up the connection between it and my skin.

I hesitated a moment before clenching my hand into a fist. "Works fine," I said. Just to make sure, I tried picking up a screwdriver and twirling it around between my fingers. I could move it with ease just the same as before, it just felt a little weird. Too bad I was left handed.

With my other hand I grabbed the tablet from Equius to check the readings. "Yeah, everything looks good," I reported with pride. I held my new hand up for a high five.

"That… might not be the best idea" he said, sounding slightly disappointed. I put it down, remembering how many tools he had broken during the process of building this thing.

"Yeah, maybe not."

Just in time, I heard a knock on the door. "Who is it?" I called.

"It's me," A voice said. Jane. "Can you please let me in now? You've been locked in there for like 45 minutes and you won't even tell me what you're doing!"

"Um…" I wasn't sure I wanted her to come in. I knew she was just going to yell at me for making such a drastic decision without telling her, let alone forcing her to leave the room while I went through with it. But I didn't think she would have let me do it. Besides, this was Jane we were talking about. I _knew_ that if she saw me do it, she would have passed out or at least thrown up.

"Dirk it's been almost an hour! If you don't let me in I'm breaking the door down!" She yelled. I sighed.

"Go open the door," I muttered to Equius. He looked worried. "You might want to leave too, she's probably gonna wanna murder anyone within a mile radius," I told him. He stood up and unlocked the door quickly before backing up against the wall.

Jane swung open the door, almost hitting Equius in the face and giving him just enough time to slip out of the room before she yelled at me.

"What the hell Dirk?! You can't just shut yourself up in your room after almost _dying_ and refuse to talk to anyone! There are people down there who want to make sure you're okay and I am _sure_ I heard a scream! I can't believe you thought you cou-" she froze.

She stood there staring at my arm, just like I knew she would. I sat on the bed watching her jaw drop and her eyes widen in horror. There was an awkward silence for a minute before she finally spoke.

"Dirk… What... happened…?"

I decided to just get it over with. "I… uh… I cut off my hand... and… I did this" I tried to explain.

"Bu- Wha-"

I awkwardly rubbed the back of my neck with my new hand. _Stop,_ I told myself, _That's probably not helping_.

Finally, she came up with something to say. "Dirk!" She ran over to me and grabbed my hand to stare at it in detail. I tried to avoid eye contact by staring at the floor. "Why would you do that?!"

"To stop it from spreading," I said. It seemed so simple, I really wasn't sure why it wasn't something we had thought of earlier.

"But- you- how do you know it even worked?!" she asked.

"I don't," I said, "But I guess we have a full day to find out."

I looked up to see her face constantly changing from disbelief to surprise to anger and back again. "Why didn't you _tell_ me you were going to do this?!"

"Would you really have let me?"

"I- I mean, _maybe_!" she stuttered. I raised an eyebrow. "Ok maybe not, but only because it was a stupid idea in the first place!"

I couldn't really argue with that. I had done a _lot_ of stupid things in the past couple days, but this probably beat all of them.

I pulled my hand away. There was another awkward silence, her expression barely softening. _Calm down, it's not like you were the one who had to do it,_ I wanted to tell her.

"Y- you really…"

I nodded.

"D- does it…"

"Hurt?"

She nodded.

"Like hell," I said.

More awkward silence. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. "I'm gonna…" I trailed off, standing up and pointing towards the door. I hated to just leave after all _that_ just happened, but I really didn't know what else to do. She just stood there in shock without responding. I took that as an approval and slipped out of the room to go downstairs and greet everyone else.

 **A/N: What do you mean this is late? I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm still going to upload a chapter tomorrow (unless something happens of course).**


	27. Chapter 27

**Dirk**

I was in the middle of an unrecognized street, fighting off zombies alone. There were more than I had ever seen before, but I was managing to get along just fine. I barely had a scratch on me. I looked around to see if anyone else was here, but nobody was.

Suddenly, I noticed a familiar shape in the crowd. _Jake!_

But as the figure got closer, I gasped and saw that it wasn't him anymore. He… _it_ … was covered in blood and had deep gashes all over. His skin was a sickly pale green, and his clothes were torn and completely blood-stained. My heart fell and an uneasy feeling quickly took over.

But seeing his eyes made it all worse. I could still remember the captivating emeralds that used to stare enchantingly back at me and somehow manage to always make eye contact with me, even when he couldn't see my eyes. They were always so bright and full of life, but now they looked empty. These eyes were glazed over and emotionless. They couldn't possibly be his. But they were. They no longer stood out against the crowd. Instead, they shared the same lifeless stare as all the others, a blank canvas perfect for reflecting back at me all the sorrow and misery from days past that had permanently changed me.

For the first time I was realizing just how much I had changed. I was never the cheery ray of sunshine Jake was. That was always one of the reasons why I needed him in the first place. He shone a light into the deep abyss of sadness I was always trying to repress. He kept me going. He made me see things about myself, good things that I needed to see. He made me wake up every day ready to tackle the world. He made me share things I would normally never agree to share. He made me dream. He made me smile. He even made me laugh. But now he was gone. Now I was running on an empty tank of happiness. Now I didn't understand how I was still going. I felt like I was moving towards nothing. The others had something they were trying to reach, but I had nothing, and they were just dragging me along. I wasn't even helping them; if anything I was just making this all worse.

They didn't want me coming. I had changed. I wasn't the same person anymore. Jake had changed too. But he hadn't changed the same way I did. He was still Jake.

The echo of his voice replayed in my mind. _"Dirk… You'll… You'll kill me, right?"_

I tried to run, only to find that I couldn't move. The katana in my hand vanished and was replaced by a single pistol. I involuntarily raised it up and pointed it at Jake's head. _No. No, no, please no_. I couldn't move my hand except for the finger that was on the trigger. This had to be my choice.

The zombies around me seemed to freeze, but not Jake. _"Dirk… please"_ I heard his voice, but it wasn't coming from the zombie in front of me. _That's because it isn't him_ , I told myself. That wasn't Jake. It couldn't be Jake. Jake was _dead_.

My hand lingered impatiently on the gun. I had to do this. I had to kill him- _it_. The logical part of my brain was willing my finger to just do it- just _pull the trigger_. If I did it would all be over. But the rest of my mind wouldn't let me do it. I couldn't shoot Jake. _That isn't Jake_ , I repeated to myself. _It wasn't Jake, it was a mindless creature that deserved nothing but a bullet to its head at the least. It wasn't Jake. It wasn't Jake_. But if that wasn't him, why couldn't I do it?

 _"_ _Please Dirk, I don't want to hurt anyone."_

I squeezed my eyes shut. _It's not him_ , I repeated over and over to myself. _It's not him, it's not him, it's NOT him_. But trying to stop seeing him didn't help. I still knew he- _it-_ was right in front of me. And I could still hear Jake's voice in my head, begging me to end him.

 _"_ _Dirk, kill me. Please."_

 _No_. I couldn't do it. I was going to die, all because I was too scared to shoot a monster that looked like the person I loved.

 _"_ _Don't let me hurt you! Please!"_

I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn't move until I had done what needed to be done. And even if I could, it wouldn't help. His voice was inside my mind; it wasn't something I could block out. He- _it_ \- was right in front of me now. I didn't have much time, and the other zombies were starting to unfreeze very slowly.

 _"_ _Dirk! Just kill me already! Please!"_

I couldn't do it. I tried, but I _just couldn't._

 _"_ _I can't let you die, Dirk!"_

I had never felt weaker before. All I had to do was pull the trigger. I had done it carelessly when I was on the roof with Jane shooting the zombies in the street. But this was different, and I wouldn't let myself do it. I knew I was going to die if I didn't, but I just couldn't.

"No!" I shouted. Suddenly, the other zombies around me began moving towards me again. I finally managed to turn around to take them out, but when I saw them I stopped.

The unrecognizable face of one of the zombies behind me had changed to become one that I identified instantly. _Dave. Ooooooh no. Was I going to have to kill both of them?_

Before I could panic for another second, another face in the crowd changed. _Roxy. No. What's going on?!_ I stumbled backwards into another zombie. I was gradually recognizing all of them. Every one of them was somebody that I knew. And they were all dead.

I was hearing all of their voices in my mind now, a chorus of people I had obviously failed in some way calling my name over and over. Begging me to finish what the hordes of zombies plaguing the streets had started. I tried to push my way out of the crowd, cursing repeatedly under my breath. But I couldn't break through, and I knew that if I looked up at the zombies blocking my path I would only see more horror.

What did I _do_?

 _"_ _Please, Dirk!"_ Jake's voice was louder than the others. _"You can do this,"_ he said, just like I knew he would if he was still alive. But he was wrong. I couldn't do it. As much as I wanted to do it, save myself, and escape this torture, I just couldn't. _"Dirk, you can do it!"_

"NO I CAN'T!" I screamed. Zombies were clawing at my skin. I was losing, and although I knew I was capable of defeating them, I couldn't. Now I was going to die and become just like them. And there was nothing I could-

Suddenly I couldn't move my finger anymore. I could no longer control what was going on.

 _BANG_.

My eyes snapped open and I instantly sat up, breathing heavily and unable to take in my surroundings. Where was I?! What just happened?!

Finally, I realized that I was at the hotel. It was just a dream. _Of course._ It was just another nightmare cooked up by my subconscious as a way to make me even more messed up than I already was, just like every dream I had had since Jake died. All of them had him in it, usually dead or dying. This one was pretty bad, but I had dreamt way worse.

This was why I had been refusing to go to sleep. I didn't want to face the nightmares. It was also why I didn't want to share a room with anybody. For one thing they would probably make me go to sleep. Then if I did fall asleep, I would end up waking up in the middle of the night just like I was now and they would know something was wrong. _At least Dave is asleep_ , I thought, looking over at the still figure in the other bed next to mine that was just barely lit up by the moonlight filtering in through the open window.

"You okay?"

 _Crap._ Apparently he _was_ awake. I panicked for a second and fell back onto the pillow, turning over so my back was to him. I didn't want to answer, but I heard him pushing off his sheets and sitting up.

"Bad dream?" he asked. _Please stop, just let me fail to fix myself emotionally in peace_.

"I don't want to talk about it," I mumbled.

"Come on," he said after a short pause. "I have nothing better to do than talk to you."

I sighed. He wasn't going to let this go, was he? At least he was _trying_ to get along with me. I thought he would hate me. He certainly had a lot of reasons to. But if he was going to try to bond with me or something, I might as well cooperate.

I grabbed my shades from the pillow and slid them onto my face before sitting back up and crossing my legs, only to find that he had put on his shades too. "You could just go back to sleep," I said.

"Yeah, good luck with that," he replied. "Don't change the subject."

"I'm fine."

He shook his head. "Yeah right. Was it a bad dream?"

All I wanted to do in that moment was tell him to shut up, but I knew that was probably the least helpful thing I could do in this situation. "Fine, maybe it was, but it's nothing. I swear I'm okay," I insisted. I wanted to try and have a normal conversation with him, but about anything but this.

There was another awkward silence. Just when I thought he had finally given it a rest, he asked me another question. "Was it about Jake?"

Hearing him say the name felt like he just threw a rock at my stomach. But I wasn't that mad this time at the person who said them. He wasn't _trying_ to make me upset. Now that I thought about it, he probably didn't even know what happened to him. He probably only knew he was dead. But I wasn't going to put myself through telling him. If he really wanted to know that bad he could just ask Jane.

"Yeah," I muttered, followed by more silence. We didn't even look at each other, which was probably good because I felt like crying, and I didn't want to see anyone's face. It just reminded me of my dream, although I was sure I would be fine in about an hour. Whenever I had a nightmare I usually went back to normal by then, probably because I was so scarred that I couldn't get much worse.

"Did you see him die?" He finally asked. The question surprised me. _What was he trying to say?_ I probably would have hit him by now if I wasn't trying so hard not to get mad at him.

"No," I answered quietly.

"Then how do you know he's dead?"

I wasn't sure what to say. Was that really his philosophy? Alive until proven dead?

"I saw his bite. Nobody can survive that," I choked out. I was getting nauseous, and I didn't think I could take much more of this conversation.

"But you didn't see him dead. So he might still be alive," he said.

"I don't think that's how this works."

"Why not? That's what I've been thinking. Rose and Roxy have been missing for a while, and when Jade got separated from them she just barely made it out alive. There's pretty much no chance that they survived. But we have no proof that they didn't, so I've just been going with the assumption that they did."

I didn't know what to say. In my silence, he continued. "It's probably not the best way to think, and it might just make it worse if we do find out that they definitely died. But it keeps me sane for now, I guess, so I've just kept thinking it."

That was the kind of outlook I should probably have taken on. Unfortunately, it wasn't working. I appreciated the effort to make me feel better, but it didn't help. "I don't know, that's not really working out for me," I said. "Can we just… talk about something else?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know, why aren't _you_ asleep?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I haven't been able to sleep in days, I don't know why," he said, but I wasn't sure I believed him. Something was probably bothering him and he just didn't want to talk about it. I decided I probably shouldn't bug him about it, since I wasn't too thrilled when he did it to me.

"That sucks."

"Well I'd rather not be able to sleep than have whatever your deal is."

He had a point. It was probably better to have some form of insomnia than to just be too afraid to sleep. "It's not _that_ different," I said.

"How?"

"Both our problems include not sleeping, I just don't sleep because I choose not to."

"That's stupid."

I laughed. "Yeah I know."

"Then why do you keep doing it?!"

"Because I have so many bad ideas that I basically gave up on filtering through them," I explained, even though I knew it didn't make a lot of sense. He was looking at me like he thought I was an idiot, and I couldn't blame him because I knew he was right. "But I've made it this far," I said in an attempt trying to validate my stupidity.

"Barely," Dave muttered. He was right again. I still wasn't sure _how_ I had made it this far. I made a loose vow to myself to stop making stupid choices, but I knew I wasn't actually going to follow through with it.

I decided to pretend I didn't hear him. This only brought another awkward silence.

"So…"

"So…"

"Tell me about how you got here," I said. _Well that sounded stupid. Good job._

"You really care?" he asked.

"Kind of… but I mostly just asked because I wanted something to say," I admitted.

He must have taken that as a valid reason, because he began telling me a more detailed version of what they had told me earlier. I was relieved that Roxy didn't die while she was out hunting, but my relief disappeared when Dave told me that she got lost again with Rose.

After he finished, I told him a slightly more detailed version of my story, although I still couldn't manage to talk much about Jake. We managed to find more things to talk about until Dave finally fell asleep, then I just laid in bed until morning.

That was how nights went for a while after that. We would talk about whatever random sleep-deprivation-induced crap came into our heads until Dave fell asleep and then sometimes I would too for about an hour, or I would just stay up.

The conversations were really awkward, but it was better than being alone. At least I had someone to talk to, even if it wasn't the one person I really wanted to talk to.


	28. Chapter 28

**Roxy**

 **Past**

I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I got some more distance from the last crowd of zombies. When I decided I was far enough away, I stopped and leaned against a wall to take a break and steady my breathing. I was getting close to my fighting limit for the day, although the hordes of zombies were a lot smaller and easier to beat than what they were like closer to the safehouse me and Jane had.

 _Almost there,_ I thought. Now that I was alone again, I had decided to look for a map to get back to the safehouse. Unfortunately, the closest place I knew where to get one (and the only place I could figure out the way back to from where I was) was at the research facility we had woken up in. I wasn't totally sure if there would be any left, and I wasn't sure if I was prepared to find out what happened to Jake and Dirk, but it was the best plan I had.

After I felt ready to go again, I started walking further down the street. I looked up at the buildings looming over me and sighed, thinking about all the people that might have lived there before whatever happened to this world happened. Suddenly, I noticed a strange unmoving figure on the fire escape a couple buildings down.

I took off running down the street to get a closer look. Was that a person? It was! I grabbed onto the ladder and climbed it up as fast as I could, wondering who it could possibly be.

 _Oh no_ , I thought as soon as I got to the top. "Jake!" I cried. He was leaned up against the wall covered in dried blood, eyes closed and not moving. _Was he… Dead?_ I bent down to check his pulse and I breathed a sigh of relief as my panic stopped for a moment. He was still alive.

Then I noticed a bloody bandage wrapped sloppily around his shoulder. I took off my backpack and pulled out some medical supplies. _You can't trust those guys to do anything properly._ I unwrapped the bandage to rewrap it and gasped.

It looked like a zombie bite… But it couldn't be. Once someone gets bitten, they can't heal anymore. The bite just bleeds until they die; more blood than you ever thought could come out of a person. But this was healing. It was still bleeding a little and healing really slowly, but it was definitely healing. I wasn't sure what it was.

Before I could re-wrap the wound properly, Jake groaned and his eyes blinked open.

"Jake!"

"R... Roxy?" He mumbled, wincing as he pulled himself up a little.

"Jakey what happened?! Your arm- are you okay?!"

For a moment he didn't seem to know what was going on. Suddenly his eyes widened and his expression snapped from mild confusion to utter panic. He slapped my hand away from his arm and grabbed his injured shoulder. "Roxy!" He gasped, his voice starting to tremble.

 _What?_ What was wrong with him? He pushed himself up all the way and tried to stand, leaning against the wall for support and still covering his shoulder with his hand.

"Jake, what-"

"I- I'm sorry, just-" he gulped. "P- please leave"

Was he crazy?! I wasn't going to just leave once I finally found him after all this time!

"Why would I do that?!" I said, stepping forward and grabbing his arm again to pull him towards the ladder.

He yanked it away and gripped the banister behind him. "Roxy stop! Please, j- just get away from me!" He yelled.

What was wrong with him? I thought he would be just as happy to see me as I was to see him. But instead he was telling me to leave, and I didn't even know what I did wrong.

He must have noticed my disappointment. "I'm… I'm sorry Roxy…" He stuttered, but his expression didn't change and he was still trying to get as far away from me as possible.

"What's wrong?" I asked quietly.

His expression softened, but I could tell there was something he didn't want to tell me. "R- Roxy please…"

I was tempted to pick up my bag and leave like he wanted me to, but I wasn't going anywhere until he told me why. "Jake…"

The fear in his eyes only grew. "R… Roxy, I… I'm…" He trailed off and his eyes darted away from me.

"You're what?"

"I'm… I'm infected."

A weight dropped in my stomach. _He can't be… no…_ I watched as he stepped away from the wall a little bit, still unable to make eye contact with me.

"P- please Roxy, leave, I… I don't want to hurt you," he stuttered. Just before he turned away from me, I could see tears in his eyes that perfectly matched the ones rolling down my cheeks.

I was about to grab my bag when I realized something. "Where?" I asked.

"W- what do you mean where?"

"Where did you get bitten?"

He froze for a moment before turning back towards me. "My shoulder," he said, gesturing towards it.

Now I was confused. "But that's… not a zombie bite," I said.

He looked up. "Y-yes it is, I'm pretty sure I would be able to tell if I got bitten by something else,"

"No but I… I've seen what a zombie bite looks like. They don't heal, they just keep bleeding. Your bite is healing," I explained. I was worried that he would ask why I knew what a zombie bite looked like. I didn't want to re-live _that_ memory again. Luckily he didn't ask, although he looked like he was about to.

"What are you trying to say?" He asked.

"I'm not sure what could have happened, but I don't think you're infected," I said, stepping back towards him.

He seemed to consider what I was saying for a moment, but then he said "Look Roxy, I- I know you're upset, and so am I, but you have to admit that- that I'm dying".

"No, really Jake, the only way you're going to die is from blood loss if you don't let me wrap up your shoulder properly," I insisted. "How long has it been since you got bitten?"

"I… I'm not sure, I kept passing out… maybe about a day?" He said. _Wow._ I couldn't imagine how much pain he must have been in, and I wasn't sure how he was still alive.

"See? A bite takes 24 hours to kill someone. If you were infected, you would be feeling _much_ worse right now," I said. Now I could tell from the look on his face that he was finally starting to believe me. I grabbed his arm, this time without him pulling away, and started wrapping up the bite.

"But that's-" he winced at the pain in his shoulder as the gauze from the medical kit in my backpack touched it, "that's impossible."

"I know."

"There's no way someone can survive a zombie bite!"

"Well you're somehow managing to. It's like you're somehow immune to the virus, but I've studied it, and it's not possible for someone to just be immune to it."

"Then what happened?!"

"I… I don't know… You're sure it was a zombie?"

"Of course, how would I not know what it was?"

"Sit down," I said, and he sat down against the wall weakly, which made me wonder how I was going to get him back down the ladder. "Unless you were cured somehow… were you messing around with anything in the lab?"

"No…" He said. I tried to think of anything else that could possibly have made him survive, but before I could come up with anything he spoke again. "Wait… I… I accidentally knocked over something and it spilled I think…"

I gasped. "What was it?!" I asked. _It couldn't have been… no, that would be way too lucky._

"It was some pink stuff in a beaker on the counter-"

 _No way._ "That's the cure I was working on!" I said.

"The what?"

"I was trying to come up with a cure for the virus, but I gave up when we had to go! I didn't know how to test it and I was almost completely sure it wouldn't work" I explained.

His face lit up. "So… so it worked?"

"Apparently!" I grinned, wrapping him in a hug.

"Ow." He tried to shrug his shoulder away from me.

"Oh right, sorry," I said and quickly let go of him.

"So now what?" he asked.

"Well I came back this way to get back to the research facility and grab a map so I can find Jane again," I said.

"I have a map," he said. he tried grabbing for his backpack, but I grabbed it first and opened it up so he wouldn't have to use his arm. Inside was one of the maps we marked. I was about to thank him when he asked me a question. "What do you mean find Jane again?"

Before I could answer him, his face paled and he spoke again. "Wait, how are you here?! Where's Jane? What about Dirk? Are they alright?!"

"Relax, Jake, Jane is fine. I left to go hunting and I got lost, then I met up with the betas, but I lost them too. Jane is still at the safehouse," I explained, but the panic didn't leave his face.

"And Dirk?!"

"He… didn't get to us in time. We thought you guys weren't coming, that's why I left to go hunting. Unless he arrived after I left…" I trailed off. I knew I wasn't helping. "He's probably fine! He probably just got held up or something; you know nothing can stop a Strider."

He seemed to calm down a little bit. "Yeah, he's a _really_ good fighter. He's the only guy I know who can take out a horde of zombies while wearing skinny jeans." He laughed weakly.

"Yeah, when we get back maybe he'll be there!" I said, glad that he was finally lightening up.

"How exactly do you plan on getting there? I… don't think I'll be able to climb back down…"

I thought for a minute, then did the only thing I could think of doing. I stepped back and smashed my foot into the window, making a huge hole and scattering pieces of broken glass. Jake recoiled. "Roxy, what the hell?!"

I ignored him. "We can rest for the day in here," I said. I helped Jake inside and finished fixing up his shoulder so we could get going tomorrow.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29- Sollux**

 **Present**

The trees cast shadows on the path ahead, only making my fading vision darker as I ran as far as I could from Aradia. My breathing was turning into short shallow gasps, and every muscle in my body was weakening with every step I took. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have been able to stay moving, but now I was determined to keep running. I had to get as much distance from Aradia as possible. I couldn't let her get hurt again.

Finally, I reached a point where I really couldn't go any more. I slowed to a stop and stumbled over to a large rock next to a tree. Dropping myself onto the rock and leaning against the tree, I prayed that she wouldn't catch up, but I knew she would be able to quickly follow the trail of dark yellow blood staining the grass all the way to this spot where it was starting to pool around me. The woods were crawling with zombies, but they didn't seem to notice I was there. It was like they thought I was one of them. Maybe they could sense death.

My head was pounding and my memories were becoming fuzzy, so I took a minute to go over what had happened so I wouldn't forget.

I was dying. There was a bad bite in my shoulder that I had gotten the day before when we were surrounded by zombies and having a hard time fighting them off. But the part about it that made it unbelievable wasn't that the two of us got into that situation. It was that I had known it was going to happen.

Well it wasn't exactly that I _knew_ it was going to happen. But once the circle of zombies began closing in around us, I realized that what was happening was exactly what happened in the reoccurring dream I had a couple days ago. Sure enough, the same situation unfolded before me. I had some sort of weird hallucination, pushed Aradia out of the way, and got bitten.

After that, Aradia managed to pull me out. I told her to leave so she wouldn't get hurt, but she insisted on staying with me until I died. I humored her for a while, but then when I felt like I didn't have much time left, I ran. I didn't want her to see me at the end of my life, and even though I knew she was strong enough to kill me, I was still worried that she would get hurt.

But now that I couldn't run anymore, there was nothing else I could do to keep her safe. I had to just sit here and wait until it was over.

Suddenly the choking feeling in my throat grew even worse and I started coughing. I knew then that I only had a couple minutes left. I could barely breathe; I could barely move. My vision of the woods in front of me blurred until it was almost unrecognizable.

This was it. It was all over. I was about to die. But at least Aradia was-

Here.

Aradia was here. _No!_ I opened my mouth to tell her to leave before it was too later, but no sound came out. She was frozen in place, her hand outstretched towards me but a look of misery and horror on her face. _Please Aradia. Leave. I can't let you get hurt._ But she couldn't hear me. I wasn't even sure if she knew that I could see her.

Suddenly my vision blurred so that I couldn't make out anything. After a moment it sharpened again, but everything was different. The ghostly blue shapes from before were back. But I didn't care. I was too focused on the shape of Aradia walking closer and reaching towards me. She was glowing a brighter blue than everything else, and she reminded me of an angel. A beautiful angel coming to guide me peacefully towards my death.

But it wasn't an angel, it was just Aradia. Although she was no less stunning than an angel, the tears rolling down her cheeks did nothing but make me make me see the nightmare of her crying because of me.

I could feel my body giving up, but my mind was still holding on by a thread. I _had_ to tell her to get out of here before I turned. But after trying again and again without success, I accepted that it was too late. She really wanted to be with me when I died, and whatever the consequences were, I couldn't stop her.

I had two choices. I could keep fighting to stay alive, and continue the physical and emotional pain of watching Aradia's misery. Or I could give up.

I had made my choice. I closed my eyes and leaned back on the tree. Then I felt the rest of my life slowly fade away with my last breath.

My eyes snapped open. It took me a moment to realize what had happened, although once I did I didn't completely understand. _Wait... Aren't I... Dead?_ I looked around to find myself inside a glass box a circular room. I instantly recognized it as the place from my vision a while ago. Everyone was unconsciously floating in their own boxes in a circle, with three empty ones in the middle. Except for me. I was slumped against the glass wall on the bottom of the box.

 _What?_ I stood up and looked at a sign on the wall. The strange dream-like quality of the room that it had the last time I was here was gone. I reviewed the list of colors of the lights on the wall. _White = alive, green = infected, red = dead_. I looked above me at the light overhead. It filled the box with a red glow. I was dead. But... I didn't feel very dead.

I actually felt perfectly fine. All the pain from the past day was gone. I lightly touched my shoulder and gasped. The bite wasn't there. It was completely fine, there wasn't even a scar. I stepped back and looked at my reflection in the glass. There wasn't a single scratch on me. Looking around, I realized that everyone else was fine too. They all looked like nothing had ever happened.

Suddenly I remembered the lights and quickly looked over at Aradia in her box a couple down from mine. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that her light was still white.

Keeping my eyes on Aradia's light, I felt around the edges of the box to try to find a way out. I felt a crack in the glass and squinted to just make out that it was the edge of a door. I squeezed my fingers into the crack and pushed it open. _Well that was easy._

I cautiously stepped out of the box into the room. _What's going on?_ It couldn't be a dream, it felt too real. But I had never seen this place before apart from that weird vision. How could I have gotten here?

 _You don't know how you got to the place you were in before either_ , I reminded myself, _Maybe that was the place that wasn't real._ Now I was really confused. It had to have been real! But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Everyone was in some kind of coma, and I had just woken up from it. That would explain why the lights over everybody matched up with what I remembered.

But it couldn't have been a dream, because then how would the lights be able to tell what was going on inside of it? And if we were all dreaming, the others were definitely having the same dream. _Unless…_ I looked over at all the wires, machines, and computer monitors in the corner.

 _It was a simulation._ Everything made so much sense now. I didn't know how we had gotten here, but this whole room was running a simulation of some kind of zombie apocalypse. It must have been a pretty good simulation if we could all feel the pain of whatever happened to us inside it.

If this was a simulation, I had to find a way to end it. I ran over to Aradia's box and used all my strength to pry open the door, but it wouldn't budge. "Aradia!" I shouted, banging on the glass, "Wake up!"

She stayed unmistakably asleep. Either the glass was soundproof or she just couldn't wake up. It seemed like she wouldn't until the simulation was over.

I didn't know if it was possible to end the simulation, but I knew that I _had_ to. I searched the room frantically for anything that could provide a clue as to how I would be able to do that. Finally, I ran over to the computers. Maybe there was some program I could cancel, or at least start hacking into, to make it easier for them to get out.

But there were a _ton_ of programs running on those computers, and they were all protected by some impenetrable coding in languages I had never even seen. It would take _sweeps_ for me to figure them out.

All I could do was wait for them to get out. I didn't know how they would, though, or even _if_ they would. There had to be some kind of end goal for them to reach that would wake them up, but I couldn't help them anymore. On their end of things my time was up. I was a zombie.

 _Oh no._ I ran back over to Aradia's box and stared at the light above her head. I knew she would be able to kill me, she was strong enough. But I had to watch and make sure. I stood there going over a scene in my mind where she escaped the forest and got back to the hotel safe and sound. It made perfect sense. She would be able to do it. She had to. I believed in her.

But a couple seconds later, the white light filling the box faded, and in its place shone a bright green.

 _No._


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30- Jake**

 **About a week later**

Roxy slammed the door shut behind her and sighed. "Hello?" she called. I looked around at the safehouse that I never thought I would live to see and listened for a voice.

Nothing.

Where were they? Roxy had promised me that Jane was here. She didn't lie to me, did she?

But when I looked over at her, she looked just as worried as I was. "Hello?" she called again, louder this time. Again, there was no answer.

"Where are they, Roxy?" I asked.

"I… I don't know." She dropped her bag down at the door and ran up the stairs to go find them. I gulped. They couldn't be dead… could they?

"Nobody up here!" I heard from upstairs.

I pushed open the door to the kitchen and walked inside, to unsurprisingly find it empty. I opened up the fridge and saw that there was nothing inside, just as Roxy came in.

"There's nothing in here," I said.

"Yeah, we were low on food when I left, that's why I had to go hunting."

"Maybe they went hunting too when they ran out of food?"

"I hope so," she sighed.

I set my backpack down on the table and sat down. "So now what, do we just wait for them to get back?" I asked.

"I guess… but Jake?" she asked nervously.

"Hm?"

"When I told you Jane was here; I didn't say anything about Dirk. You know that, right? I mean, I hope he made it here, but I really don't know.

"

She didn't have to remind me. It was a long time ago that she had made that promise, and I had a long time to think about it. Even though I had faith that Dirk could make it on his own, I was aware of the very real possibility that he was dead. I was extremely disappointed that he wasn't here, but I wasn't _that_ shocked.

"I know," I said.

An awkward pause followed, but Roxy was eager to break it. "It's okay, I'm sure both of them will turn up. In the meantime, let's do something fun! There's a pack of cards and some board games in the closet upstairs if you want!"

"Board games? What is this, everything useful is mysteriously missing, but anything that can't actually help us in any way is everywhere!" I said.

She laughed. "Apparently. Anyway, I'll go grab something."

I raised an eyebrow. _Is this really the best use of our time?_

Apparently she could read my mind. "What, you got any better ideas?"

I sighed and followed her upstairs.

A couple days later, there was still no sign of Jane or Dirk. We were starting to get really worried, but of course Roxy managed to distract the both of us with more obscure card games than I thought even existed. We were sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of our third round of "Psychological Jujitsu" when Roxy suddenly held up a hand and told me to shut up.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

I listened closely, but I didn't hear anything. After a moment of me looking at her like she was crazy, he stood up off the floor and grabbed my arm to pull me up. "Ow, Roxy what are you doing?!" I said, rubbing the bruised scar on my shoulder.

"Oh yeah that, sorry! But come here!" she whispered.

 _What is she going on about?_ I begrudgingly stood up and followed her to the front door. "What is it?!"

"Can't you hear that?"

"Hear what?!"

"Wow, your hearing sucks!" she pushed me into the door and squished my head against it.

"Roxy! What the-"

"Shut up and listen!"

I listened for a moment just to humor her, but then I heard what she was talking about: Two muffled voices arguing down the street.

"We've been out here for so long, come on, let's go back!"

"No, it's only been a couple of hours!"

"But this is so boring! We haven't found _any_ more survivors yet, anybody who's left is probably dead!"

"Shut up Vriska! Even _I_ can see you're just being lazy!"

 _Vriska?_ Were those the trolls?

"Can you tell who it is? All I can hear is mumbling," Roxy said.

I moved away from the door and ran into the kitchen to grab my things. "I think it's some of the trolls! They're looking for survivors!" I called.

She gasped. "I'll pack up the cards, let's go!"

"Forget the stupid cards, we can't miss them!" I said. But when I got back to the door, she was already standing there with her backpack slung over her shoulder, a gun in her hand, and the box of cards sticking out of her back pocket.

I didn't have enough time to ask her why she brought them. I grabbed the knob and swung open the door.

Down the street we could already see two pairs of orange horns sticking up out of the crowd. We ran towards them as fast as we could, pushing past the few zombies that were on our street.

"Hey!" Roxy cried out as we slowed to a stop in front of the pair of troll girls. One of them was wearing a yellow Light shirt and had on what looked like sunglasses with one of the lenses popped out. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she looked very indifferent about having found us. I recognized her instantly as Vriska. The other girl wore a teal Mind shirt and glasses tinted red. She wasn't looking at us, but she was smiling in our direction. I guessed she was the blind one I had heard about.

"Oh, it's you," Vriska said with audible disappointment. I ignored her and turned to the girl who was still beaming at the… scent?... Of us.

"You guys are here!" Roxy said.

"Yeah, all the trolls woke up here a while ago! We've been running a safehouse in this huge hotel and looking for survivors, and it sounds like you two are the last ones," the girl said, "whoever you are."

"I'm Jake and this is Roxy," I said, holding my hand out to her. She seemed confused for a moment then shook it.

"Terezi Pyrope," she said.

Suddenly I realized something and my heart stopped. "Wait, did you say we were the last two?" I asked. She nodded. "Are Dirk and Jane at the safe house?"

She thought for a minute. "Girl with short hair and pointy glasses guy?" She asked.

 _No way._ "That's them!" I grinned. _I'm actually going to see Dirk again!_

Roxy looked ecstatic too. "Let's go!"

Vriska and Terezi started leading us back to the safehouse. _Finally_ , I thought, trying to hold back a smile. I had been so excited to meet up with everyone, and when I got bitten I eventually accepted that it wasn't going to happen. Now I had the chance to see them, and there was no way I was going to let that chance slip away again.


	31. Chapter 31

**A/N: A paragraph of this chapter was written by my friend Rose, who is the same on that wrote that Jane chapter a while back. She also wrote bits of some chapters yet to come, so… look forward to that. And since I know she's gonna read this, hi friend thx.**

 **Chapter 31- Dirk**

I was lying down on my bed, trying to think of ways to distract myself for what felt like the fifteenth time today. Since getting here, I had been having my fair share of good days and bad days. On the good days I would hang out with everyone else and do whatever they came up with to pass the time, even though it was usually just pointless games and conversations. On the bad days I would sit alone in my room being haunted by my memories and dreams, which were starting to become indistinguishable (I told you I was completely losing it).

In case you couldn't have already guessed, today was one of the bad days. So as usual, I had locked myself in my room, thinking about the past and just being generally upset. Why did it even matter what was real and what wasn't? Both my dreams and my memories were managing to torture me exactly the same way anyway.

 _My life is a mess_ , I sighed. Downstairs I could hear a lot of muffled but identifiable voices. They were pretty loud and all talking at once, so they must have been excited about something. But whatever it was, I certainly didn't care.

Suddenly out of the cluster of voices I thought I heard two that I hadn't heard in a long time: Jake and Roxy. I gasped and sat up. _Wait, no, that doesn't make any sense._

I quickly settled down. I couldn't have just heard them. It must have been another weird hallucination. I pushed the thought out of my mind and ignored the voices downstairs.

But a minute later, it seemed like nobody cared that I didn't want to go celebrate whatever it was they were excited about. They were calling my name.

 _What's their problem?_ They knew not to bother me when I didn't want to be bothered. I just didn't respond.

I heard footsteps running up the stairs in front of my room. "Dirk!" It was Jane.

 _For crying out loud. This better be good._ "What?" I groaned.

"Terezi and Vriska are back!"

"Good for them."

"No, come out here!"

"Leave me alone!"

"There's something you need to see Dirk, stop being a whiny teenager for just _five minutes_ and come downstairs!"

I sighed. I didn't want to have to deal with this, but I might as well just get it over with before we ended up in another hour-long argument like we usually did when she tried to make me leave my room. I got off the bed and took my time unlocking the door to seeing Jane standing there grinning at me.

"Make it quick," I muttered.

Apparently she didn't notice my obvious disinterest or just didn't care, because she grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside my room to the stairs.

"Jane what the-"

My heart stopped the second I looked over the edge of the railing.

Was that-?

 _No way._

Somehow, there, smiling up at me, were Jake and Roxy, mostly unharmed and running over to the stairs to greet me.

 _What the hell?!_ I didn't know how to process this. Jake was dead. Roxy I wasn't _too_ surprised about, but I knew for a fact that Jake was dead. I saw the bite. He couldn't have survived. He physically _could not_ be here right now. But… he was.

My jaw dropped. I turned to Jane to ask her what was going on, but she just gave me a big smile and grabbed my arm again. "Come on!"

She pulled me over to the stairs and we ran down to where Jake and Roxy were standing there waiting for us. _This can't be real. There's no way in hell that this is real._

But even though I thought I was imagining it, they threw their arms around me and I hugged them back. It _had_ to be real. It _felt_ real. I _needed_ it to be real. But I had such a confusing mix of dreams and hallucinations plaguing my mind that I wasn't sure I could trust what "felt" real. It was probably best to just go along with it and worry about this later.

Finally they let go. "It's so great to see you!" Roxy squealed. I smiled and nodded, but I couldn't take my eyes off Jake. He was grinning like an idiot along with everyone else, and aside from a couple scratches and scars, he looked completely fine. His shirt was ripped in the same shoulder where he was bitten, but the bite was gone and replaced with a bruised and painful-looking scar. _How can this be possible?_

"Y- you're..." I trailed off.

"I'm fine" he said. "Apparently that stuff I spilled on my arm at the lab was a cure Roxy was working on. She didn't think it would work but it did, so I went with her to find you guys and… now we're here!"

I couldn't believe it. Jake had been alive this entire time. I felt like crying.

"So… you're immune to the virus?"

"I guess so!"

There was a moment of silence.

"Dirk, why don't you look happy?" Jake asked.

"No, I am, I swear, I really am! I'm just… having trouble processing all this."

"Well you don't need to! We're all together now, isn't that all that matters?"

I smiled again. "Yeah."

I heard a voice behind Jake and Roxy. "I apologize for interrupting, but…" They turned around and I could see Kanaya stepping towards us with a worried look on her face. "Where is Rose?"

Roxy's smile vanished. I instantly knew what she was going to say.

I grabbed Jake's arm. "I'll go show you around," I whispered, and we left as quickly as we could before things started getting sad again, disappearing around the corner where the elevators were.

I pressed the button to go upstairs. "So right now I'm sharing a room with my brother, and I kinda wanna keep it like that so I can keep an eye on him... there should be an open room next to mine if that's ok with you..." I said while we waited.

"Yeah that's fine!" He said, although he looked just a little bit disappointed. "Wouldn't want to mess up things between you and your bro."

"Yeah sorry," I said when the elevator doors opened and we stepped inside. I pressed the button and as soon as the doors closed again I grabbed Jake and hugged him tighter than I had ever hugged anyone ever before. Part of it was wanting to make up for the goodbye that I was too shocked to give him before. Part of it was to try to figure out if this was real.

And in that moment I knew that it was. The way I felt when I was with Jake was indescribable. It was like the whole world was frozen around us, and I had all the time in the world to focus on all the little things about him that I couldn't get enough of. His hair that always fell perfectly into place, his eyes that reflected all the happiness he had inside and constantly seemed to sparkle, his uncontrollably adorable personality, his laugh. _God_ I loved that laugh.

The feeling was something I had felt before in dreams, but in dreams it was an artificial fabrication of how I truly felt. It was only a fraction of the infinite fascination that being with him gave me, and it was the only thing easily distinguishable from reality.

But this was different. I was overwhelmed by an end to the torturous longing to see him again. This feeling was filling my mind. It was real. This was real. He was really alive.

The feeling brought along with it another feeling. A feeling with a ghostly familiarity that I hadn't felt in a long time. Everything was going to be ok. I was…

 _Happy._

"I-" _I love you._ That was what I had been wanting to say to him ever since he left and I missed the chance. But now I just couldn't bring myself to say it. It felt like it wasn't the right time, but if now wasn't the time, when _was_ the time? Maybe I was just scared. But scared of _what_?

"Dirk, are you alright?" Jake asked.

I pulled away from him and looked at the floor, afraid that I was being too clingy or something. "Yeah, sorry, I just… I'm really glad you're alive."

He stepped back towards me. "No, It's just… I didn't want to say anything, but... Janey said you weren't doing so well."

I looked back up at him. He seemed genuinely concerned, and I didn't want to worry him more. "Oh, it's nothing," I said, "I'm fine."

"Dirk please. Whatever's wrong, you can tell me."

Part of me wanted to tell him. If there was anybody I could really talk to about this, it was him. But I didn't really know how. "There's a lot that's wrong, I'll tell you later," I promised. "Besides, I think I'm okay now that you're here."

He sighed. "I'm going to hold you to that. In the meantime, on the subject of things I didn't want to mention, _what the bloody hell happened to your arm_?!"

Oh right. That. I was wondering how he would react.

The elevator doors opened and we began walking down the hallway. "Well before coming here, Jane and I went to go hunting but we didn't make it. I got attacked pretty bad, and I passed out. Apparently while I was unconscious some of the trolls found us and brought us here. When I woke up I had a bite in my wrist, so I... took care of it," I explained.

Jake was wide-eyed and surprised. He grabbed my hand and held it up to his face to examine it. "Jane let you do that?!"

"No," I smiled.

"What, did you just not tell her?!"

"Basically."

"What?! Dirk, you can't just cut off half your arm and not give her a warning!"

"Yeah that's what she said," I laughed. "She wanted to kill me."

"Dirk!"

"Yeah, I guess I've been kind of a jerk to her the past week..." I admitted solemnly.

"What?! Why?!"

"That goes back to the problems we mentioned earlier, and as I hinted at before, I really don't want to talk about it."

We got to the room next to mine, and I used the card in my pocket to unlock the door. "Here you go," I said, leading him inside and trying not to look at him so I wouldn't feel guilty for not telling him about my problems.

Jake closed the door behind him. "Dirk please, you have to tell me what's going on."

"I really don't," I insisted, looking around for anything I could distract him with.

Suddenly he grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face him. A chill ran down my spine. Somehow, he always seemed able to look me dead in the eyes even when I knew he couldn't see them. That was what he was doing now. His eyes stared right into mine like he could read every emotion I was feeling. I wasn't sure if he actually could, but the look on his face was already more than I could take. Part of me loved it when he looked at me like that, but the other part of me felt uncomfortably vulnerable. He _knew_ something was wrong now.

"Please, Dirk."

I sighed. There was no getting out of this, I figured. Maybe telling him would even make me feel better afterwards.

I sat on the bed and looked away again. He sat down next to me, which only added more pressure. I didn't know where to start, but once I found the right words everything came spilling out.

"Ever since you left… I've been having really bad dreams. I- I kept seeing everyone dying, and you dead… and… I couldn't handle it, so I eventually stopped sleeping. I couldn't deal with you being dead, so I… I tried to take out my feelings by fighting more zombies, but that just put me in a lot of near-death experiences with barely any rest…"

I glanced at Jake. His eyes were completely focused on me and his mouth was hanging open in a state of shock and concern. I looked away again. I didn't want to see him like that.

I was right. Telling Jake about all of this felt like it was being finally lifted off my chest. And it was a lot easier than I expected. "Then I met one of the trolls camping out at a CVS, but he… he was such a pessimistic jerk and he refused to let me take him with me, so I had to leave him there… and then I started feeling like I couldn't save anyone… and I guess it all just went downhill from there. I kept thinking about what happened to you, and… it felt like the world was out to get me. I thought everything was my fault. Nothing good was happening until I finally got to the safehouse, but then I found out that Roxy was gone too… and I figured that with my luck she was probably dead too… and I guess I kind of snapped. When I told Jane what happened to you… she was so upset, and I… I just acted like she had no reason to be."

I didn't dare to look at Jake again. I was sure he would be ashamed of me. This might have been the end of our whole relationship, and I didn't blame him. I had acted completely horrible. But now that I was finally getting all of it out, I couldn't stop.

"I just kept focusing on everything that was wrong and assuming that it was even worse than it was… now that I think about it I was basically acting like that troll I met… oh my god no wonder she couldn't stand me… but she kept trying to understand what was wrong with me and I wouldn't cooperate… I guess I was just really tired and angry and I couldn't think properly… then I tried to apologize the next day but she didn't accept it… she went out to go hunting and I made her take me because I was too stubborn to stay behind and sleep. Then…"

I wasn't sure if I should mention what happened with the MP3 player. He would probably think I was going insane, which I was already totally convinced that I was, and then everything would _really_ be ruined. I hated leaving out something so important, but at least I was _mostly_ telling the truth.

"Then I almost died again, and we sort of made up… but I kept having nightmares and bad memories, and it started becoming hard to tell what was real and what was just a dream. After we ended up here, I started actually sleeping again, but I've still been having really bad nightmares, and… I don't know, everything is just really weird right now."

There was silence. I knew it. He wouldn't want to be with someone with this much emotional baggage. I felt so much better to have finally talked to him about it, but now I was worried again for a whole different reason.

I was too ashamed to look at him, and neither of us said anything, but suddenly Jake did something I didn't expect.

He hugged me.

"I'm so, so sorry," he said. His voice sounded a little bit different. Was he… _crying_? "I never should have left, I'm so sorry you had to go through all that."

He was okay with all this? He really wanted to be with me so much that he wasn't turned away by all my problems?

"No, this isn't your fault," I said. "You did what you thought you had to do. It's my fault, if I didn't pick the shortcut route we would never have been in this mess in the first place."

"No, Dirk-"

"It's not your fault, you can't do anything wrong, you're an angel. Hell, you even managed to save your own life by accident." I laughed.

"Dirk, stop it, none of this is your fault." he said. Obviously he was just trying to make me feel better. "You couldn't have prevented it!"

 _Yes I could have._ But I didn't want to argue with him anymore. I was finally feeling free of a good portion of my pain, and I didn't want to ruin it right now.

But from my silence he could read my mind. He let go of me and looked me in the eyes again. "Dirk, listen to me. You can't blame yourself for any of this. Things happen for a reason, and there hasn't been a single situation where you were that reason. It's _not_ your fault, you have to understand that. You haven't done a single thing to deserve this, it's really all in your head. Please, Dirk, I don't want you acting like this! You aren't responsible for any of this, do you understand?"

I was starting to feel like maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn't all my fault. But it probably was. I nodded, figuring that maybe I would change my mind for real later and then it would be less of a lie.

He must have taken that as a good enough answer, because he changed the subject. "I wish there was something I could do to help you with your dreams."

"Maybe you already have."

"What do you mean?"

"Well I have a feeling that now that you're here, my dreams will be a lot better."

He smiled. "Let me know how that goes. I'm going to go take a shower" He said as he stood up. "I'm a mess. I'll be down in a little bit to eat something."

I decided not to tell him that all the hot water was probably gone from my 2-hour-long shower earlier.

Before standing up to leave, I had to ask him something. "Are you really fine with having to deal with me and all my problems?"

He paused for a moment, seeming to fight with himself on something. Then, out of nowhere, he leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. My eyes went so wide I was sure he would have seen them through my shades if his own eyes had been open. Though it lasted only a moment, it felt like an eternity before he was pulling back again and smiling a light and embarrassed smile, his cheeks blushing brightly.

"Of course," he said, "I'm just glad to finally be with you again."

My face was probably bright red and for a moment all I could do was sit there gaping at him and trying to process what just happened. Once I realized what was going on, I quickly tried to wipe the look off my face. I smiled coolly and looked up at him confidently to hide what I was thinking on the inside, which was something along the lines of " _OH MY FREAKING GOD THAT JUST HAPPENED"._ He had never kissed me before, except for that one time that we don't need to talk about right now. Now I was torn between this being the _best_ day of my life, or one of the worst.

I grinned and stood up to leave. "I'm glad to be with you again too"


	32. Chapter 32

**Dirk**

I found myself standing at the entrance to an alley with only a quick second to get myself oriented. My shades were gone and I had no weapons or memory of how I got here. I was completely vulnerable. _Oh crap._ The street was completely full of zombies. But they weren't just unnamed figures in a crowd this time. Just like some of my previous dreams, every single one of them was someone I knew. It _had_ to be a dream.

But if it was a dream, it wasn't a normal dream. None of us have been having normal dreams. It must have been some weird post-Derse-or-Prospit brain thing. All our dreams were completely lucid, and we could feel everything. We could even close our eyes in the dream without it ending. Sometimes we could control what we do, other times we felt stuck in some kind of predestined movement. But we couldn't change what was happening around us. And even when we knew it was a dream, we couldn't just wake up on command.

So even though this was obviously a dream, I was scared. I knew I would feel all the pain of being attacked, and everything seemed _exactly_ like real life, which explained why I was having so much trouble processing reality when I was awake.

I knew that even if I didn't have the problem of all the dead faces staring through me seeming real, I would still be panicking over the fact that they one day could be. If I had to be honest with myself I would have said I was surprised they weren't already. Getting people killed seemed to be the only thing I was good at. Luckily I didn't see Jake in the crowd for once, but this was still just as bad.

" _Dirk."_

 _Not again._ The voice was in my mind, quickly being joined by voices of every other face in that crowd.

" _What did you do?"_

Now they were all blaming me. This was even worse. I started backing up slowly into the alleyway.

" _This is your fault."_

" _You did this!"_

" _Why couldn't you save us?"_

It was horrible. I was being surrounded by the voices of people I loved, repeating over and over the same thoughts I had been trying to push away for days.

" _You didn't do enough."_

" _Why did you even try?"_

"Shut up," I muttered through gritted teeth. I couldn't tell if I was sad anymore or just angry. I was mad at them for reminding me of what I had done, but I knew that it was my fault that they were. If I hadn't failed them so badly, I wouldn't even be in this situation. I didn't even know what I did wrong, but a nagging feeling in the back of my mind told me it was definitely something. I _was_ just angry, but not at them. I was angry at myself.

They were coming after me down the alley now. I backed up as far as I could before hitting a brick wall. I pulled my eyes away from them for a moment to see that there was nowhere I could go. The walls on either side were solid, and I had no weapons to fight my way through the crowd, not that I thought I would be able to snap out of my fear long enough to try.

They were only a couple feet away from me. I was going to die. Failing to keep my breathing down to a reasonable level, I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself against the wall. But I could still hear them taunting me.

" _You failed."_

" _This is all your fault."_

I knew they were right.

I was ready for them to kill me. I was ready for them to give me what I knew I deserved.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. _This is it,_ I thought for a moment before I realized that it couldn't have been one of the zombies. It wasn't a strong, undead grip that was about to rip me to pieces. This was a gentle touch that somehow managed to send a wave of calmness to my brain.

"Dirk."

I carefully opened my eyes to see Jake, alive and looking at me with an expression that told me everything was going to be okay.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

I glanced past him at the horde of zombies that seemed frozen in place. They were once again unidentifiable figures, and all I could hear was Jake's voice and my own heavy breathing.

I relaxed my body from its position against the wall and tried to swallow my panic. His hand fell off my shoulder but he still stood staring into my eyes like nobody else ever had.

"Dirk-"

Without thinking I threw my arms around him and buried my face into his shoulder.

"I'm so, so sorry," I sobbed.

He hugged me back tightly, bringing my head closer to his. "This isn't your fault," he said.

I wanted to believe him, and his soothing and confident tone almost made me. But I still couldn't get rid of the idea that _I_ was the one to blame for all of this.

"Yes it is, you don't understand."

He pushed me off of him, keeping a steady grip on my shoulders, and looked me directly in the eyes again. I suddenly remembered that I wasn't wearing my shades. My instinct was to look away, but his eyes had a look of trust and sincerity that I couldn't ignore.

"Dirk, listen to me. Whatever happens happens, and unless you deliberately stabbed one of them through the heart or something like that, it's _not_ your fault. I know you, you wouldn't do anything that would put any of us in danger like that."

 _Then maybe you don't know me like you think you do,_ I thought at first. But I brushed it away. This wasn't the kind of thing I wanted to think about right now. Besides, Jake was probably right as he always was when it came to me, even if half my mind was telling me he was wrong. Right?

I wiped away my tears and nodded.

"Great," he smiled and held out a pistol to me. "Now let's go kick some ass."

I glanced at the zombie mob. It was still made up of strangers. _It's okay_ , I told myself.

I smirked and grabbed the gun. "I thought you'd never ask."

"Dirk?"

My eyes blinked open to a familiar bright sunlit room. As usual, it took me a second to remember where I was. But this time it felt different. The room was usually dark when I woke up, and I could usually see the silhouetted figure of Dave asleep in the opposite bed.

 _What time is it?_ I glanced at the clock on the table next to me and squinted my tired eyes to read the hands.

 _9:17._

Had I really slept that long? I usually wasn't able to make it more than a couple hours without waking up from a dream. What had I even dreamt about? I couldn't remember anything past Jake showing up. But I didn't have the anxiety and panic that came from a nightmare. Instead my mind was peacefully blank. It felt good to have completely empty thoughts for once.

"Dirk?"

I rolled over to see Jake standing in the doorway. "Hey," I said.

He came inside and I rolled back to the other side and grabbed my shades before sitting up on the edge of the bed, where he sat next to me and smiled.

"Well you slept pretty late," he said.

"Yeah, I guess,"

"How did you sleep?"

"Good." I smiled.

He grinned back. "No nightmares?"

"Nope. I told you you would fix it by coming back."

"Oh stop it," he laughed. _Oh my god that laugh._

"I'm serious!"

"Whatever, as long as you're feeling better."

I really was starting to feel better. Then I wondered something. "Have you had nightmares?" I asked.

His eyes clouded over. "Not all the time, but… yeah," he said. I didn't want to ask any more because I didn't want to make him upset, and a short silence followed. But apparently I didn't have to ask. "I had a dream where… I came back here to find you and Jane, but when I got here… you had been bitten."

I put my arm around him. "Well it's alright…" I didn't completely know what to say. "Maybe now that we're both here together, all our nightmares will go away."

We sat there in silence for a couple moments until a loud voice from downstairs interrupted us.

"HEY GET DOWN HERE YOU LOVESICK PIECES OF CRAP!"

Jake stood up. "Oh right I forgot, Karkat sent me up here to wake you up because he wanted to talk to everyone."

"I guess we should go then. That guy has some anger issues," I laughed. But I was kind of nervous. If he had something to tell us that he couldn't have just told us individually, it must have been pretty important, or something he didn't want to talk about more than once. What could possibly be wrong this time? He couldn't have done something so bad that he didn't want to talk about it.


	33. Chapter 33

**A/N: Ok, so first of all, a couple paragraphs of this chapter was written by my friend Rose. I** ** _think_** **this is the last one where she wrote some, but I'll have to see. Second, this chapter was really late. Sorry about that. I just started school and one of my teachers is giving** ** _a ton_** **of homework every night, so chapter uploads might be a bit more random. I'm still trying for one every other day though, so please bear with me!**

 **Dirk**

He did _what_?!

I scanned the expressions of the others: confusion, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger. One of the trolls looked like she was ready to kill him, and apparently she was.

She stood up and grabbed a sword from next to her chair. "You freaking idiot!" She shouted, stepping towards him with a tight grip on the sword.

Everyone suddenly looked panicked. Another one of the trolls grabbed a spear and stood in front of Karkat. "Clam down Vriska, he did nothing wrong!" she said.

"Oh really Feferi?! He did _nothing wrong_?! Why don't we take a moment to go over exactly what he did?!"

"Vriska-" one of the other trolls began quietly.

"Shut up Tavros!" she shouted. " _He_ went to see his denizen without telling us, _and then_ he made the decision to make it so that we didn't have to deal with playing the game anymore, even though he was given absolutely _no details_ about what that would entail! Out of all _stupid_ and _horrible_ decisions, that even tops everything _Eridan_ has done!"

"Vriska, he said there was a way to fix it if we can get everyone together!" Feferi said.

"I don't _care_! We can fix this without him, we don't need him trying to make his crappy leadership decisions anymore! For some reason, none of you seem to understand that this is _worse_ than playing the game!"

Feferi and Vriska looked like they were going to kill each other, and everyone was just watching, frozen with fear, except for Karkat, who was looking quiet and nervous for once, staring ashamed at the lobby carpet. Suddenly a horrible realization dawned on me.

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "We all woke up here with no memories. How long have you known about this?" I asked Karkat.

My question was enough to pry everyone's eyes off Vriska and Feferi and back to Karkat, who looked more scared than I figured any of us had ever seen him. "When I woke up, there was a note in my pocket that… brought back my memories," he said.

It took me a minute to fully understand what that meant. He knew about this _the whole time_. Now _I_ wanted to kill him. "You knew about this all along and you didn't _tell_ anyone?!" I shouted.

He shrunk back in his chair. I was just about willing to forgive him for accidentally making a stupid decision, but completely ignoring the chance to fix it? "What is _wrong_ with you?! You could have been trying to round everyone up to fix this _weeks_ ago, we could have been _out of this_ by now! But no, you're deciding to tell us all this now! You have no idea what kind of crap we had to go through because of you and you didn't even bother to try and fix it because you were too _scared_ to admit you made a mistake! People _died_ because of you! A stupid mistake is one thing, but you completely screwed us all over and now _we_ have to go through mental and physical _hell_ because of it!"

I was so angry I couldn't even bother to take my eyes off of him to see what the others' reactions were. I clenched my fists and started walking towards him. Vriska and Feferi backed away from each other and watched me anxiously. I had been suffering so much the past couple of weeks from something that _he_ could have put an end to sooner. I was literally ready to kill him.

Apparently Dave could tell. "Dirk, _stop,_ " he said. But I couldn't stop, I was already too mad.

"No I will _not_ stop! You have no idea what we've been through, what _I've_ been through! _Your_ whole story here so far has been sunshine and rainbows compared to the rest of us, so don't even _try_ to say _I'm_ being the unreasonable one here! We've been losing _everything_ thanks to your _stupid_ boyfriend and you're acting like it's no big deal! He was too scared about his reputation to worry about our _lives_ , and if that's not selfish and ridiculous I don't know what is! If you really can't see that-"

"Dirk!" Jake yelled from behind me. My head snapped around to see him staring at me with wide eyes and a worried look on his face.

Suddenly I felt bad. _What was I doing?_

He sent me a look that said " _We'll talk about this later."_

I glanced back at Karkat. He looked scared and sad, like he knew I was going to hurt him but he thought he deserved it. He must have been _really_ miserable if he was acting like this instead of yelling at everyone as usual. _Oh my god what did I do?_

I sat down in the chair next to Jake without another word and crossed my arms over my chest. I was still really mad at Karkat, but I felt bad for screaming at him. Besides, I knew that if I even tried to lay a finger on him Dave would probably murder me.

"Just… what do we have to do to fix all of this?" Jake asked.

After a brief pause Karkat took his eyes off me and answered. "Well, first we have to gather up everyone who isn't dead. Then we have to solve a riddle that tells us to go to some building that will supposedly show us what else to do," he explained.

"Well we've got everyone, right? So that takes care of the first step!" John said.

There was a moment of silence and everyone looked around the room to see if anyone was missing. "Not exactly," Equius pointed out, "We are still missing Aradia, Sollux, and Eridan."

"Well let's face it guys, Aradia and Sollux aren't lost. Aradia doesn't _get_ lost. They're dead," Vriska said, sounding more relieved that they wouldn't have to go track them down than upset that they were gone. The other trolls didn't say anything, but from their faces I could tell they knew it was true all along but didn't want to admit it.

"Whale what aboat Eridan?" Feferi asked.

"Yeah," Karkat said, "He ran away. He better not have gone and died or I swear I'm going to freaking kill him!"

Nobody bothered to question the logic of that sentence. They were probably just too busy mourning over Sollux and Aradia, but I was busy worrying about whether or not this conversation was going where I thought it was.

Apparently it was. "Well if nobody's seen him since he left, what are we supposed to do?" Jade asked.

I sighed. "I saw him a while ago," I said. "I met him in a CVS on the way to meet Jane. It sounded like that's where he was going to stay."

"What? Why didn't you tell us sooner?!" Roxy asked.

"I don't know; it never came up in conversation. And the guy's personality was not exactly something I wanted to remember."

"Can you remember where it was on the map?" Jane asked.

I nodded, and everyone searched their pockets for a map before I was hit in the face with one folded into a paper airplane from the cat troll across the room, who giggled quietly as I picked it up from off the floor. I unfolded it and laid it out on the coffee table next to me. It only took me a couple seconds to point out the store where I found Eridan, and Roxy leaned over and circled it with a bright pink pen.

"Perfect! So we just have to solve the riddle and then hit up that CVS on the way there!" She said. Nobody seemed to disagree.

"Can we see the riddle?" Kanaya asked. Karkat pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket (I assumed it was the note he found when he woke up) and handed it to her. She studied it and nodded. "Yes, this will take some time to figure out, but I'm sure with some help I can get it," she said.

A couple people volunteered to help, but I didn't. I didn't think I knew anything about riddles, not to mention the fact that I wasn't in the mood to volunteer for anything. "So great, everything's settled, can I go now?" asked Vriska, who had been leaning on the armrest of her chair most of the time picking at her nails.

"Whatever you want," Karkat said irritably. His face had returned to its default angry expression, but his eyes were still anxiously moving from person to person like he was expecting someone else to try to kill him.

A group formed by Kanaya trying to figure out the riddle, and some people walked off. Jake stood up and walked towards the stairs leading upstairs, waving me over to him.

 _Oh no_. I really didn't want to have this conversation. But he wouldn't speak to me until we were inside his room and he shut the door behind us.

"Dirk, are you okay?" He asked, stepping into the main part of the room.

 _Yep, this is exactly the conversation I wanted to avoid._

"I'm fine," I said.

"What just happened seemed anything but fine."

"Sorry." I apologized quietly, slowly inching back towards the door and eager to get this over with.

"You can talk to me about what's going on, you know."

"I know, I tried! I told you pretty much everything and I thought I would be okay, but I'm just not!"

"But everything's going to be okay now!" He pleaded. "Roxy and I are alive, and we found a way to get out of here! We're all going to be fine!"

"I _know_. But it's like just the fact that I _thought_ you guys were dead was enough to permanently ruin me. I know I can stop worrying, but it's like part of me _wants_ to suffer. I keep telling myself everything is okay, but I just can't believe myself for some reason."

"Well if everyone else is telling you it's alright-"

"It doesn't _matter_! If I can't listen to myself, how am I supposed to listen to anyone else?! You keep saying I can change this but I just _can't_! You don't understand, you don't know what it's like! I'm not coming out of this just fine! You could _never_ understand!"

Jake broke eye contact with me and looked down at the floor. _Oh crap, what did I do this time?_

He didn't say anything. "Jake?"

He looked up and my breath caught in my throat, my heart plummeting to my stomach. His eyes looked so tired and broken. I was in shock.

"I do understand Dirk." He began quietly, "I understand a lot more than you think I do. You...you're not the only one suffering. Everyone is. I am too, okay!?"

 _Oh no._ This was just like when I got mad at Jane when I met up with her. I was too upset about my own problems to think that he could be hurt too. It was _exactly_ like what happened before, and now I was going to mess this up just like I had then. "Jake, I'm sor-"

"Just because my problems are different doesn't mean they're not messing me up just as much as yours are! I think I'm even more paranoid than you are! I keep having nightmares about our friends dying, Dirk, and that's all anyone ever talks about! I haven't even had to go through someone close to me dying like this yet, and that just worries me even more! It's way too lucky, I just know something terrible is going to happen soon and I won't be able to handle it!"

"Jake-"

"Any one of us could die! You could die! Roxy or Jane could die! I don't know who it's going to be, but I just know it's going to be someone! It could even be _me_! It probably will be, I'm too weak to survive this! What if something happens when we go to end this, what if I'm not immune after all?!"

" _Jake_ -"

"I feel like life is just teasing me at this point! Everything seems like it's going to be fine, but I've heard enough from other people to know that it _can't_ be! Something is just bound to go wrong, and I feel like the longer I have to wait for it the worse it's going to be when it happens!"

At this point tears were streaming down his face, and he was sitting down on the bed. He seemed to be looking past me, like he was talking to me but couldn't bring himself to look at me.

" _Jake-_ "

"I-" I couldn't listen to the rest. I was too busy feeling horrible. All this time he was trying to help me feel better, and I barely took enough time to wonder how he was feeling. I knew he had spent days alone, sitting on a fire escape and bleeding out, sure that death was coming. How could I have thought he was going to be the same person after _that_?

Even though I wanted to make sure I was there for him, I couldn't take any more of him talking about it. It hurt too much.

I stood there for a moment, having no idea what to do. He was still just sitting there crying and I was still just standing there watching and I hated myself because I knew I couldn't do anything! _Come on Dirk, MOVE!_ Suddenly, my mind went blank and I was moving forward. Before I even knew what was happening, his face was in my hands and his eyes were flying open as I kissed him.

It was different this time. Oh it was _so different._ Our first kiss had been small, hesitating, and uncertain. This one was so much more. It was a much more heated kiss, though still somewhat subdued. My heart was pounding and I thought to myself, _if I die let it be now._ Kissing Jake was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It seemed to last forever.

Eventually we both pulled back, breathing hard, but he was smiling all the same and I swear I could fight an infinite hoard of zombies forever as long as I knew Jake would smile like that forever. I touched my forehead to his and muttered apologies over and over and now he was laughing.

 _Why was he laughing?_

"Jake, what the hell?" I whispered, but it came out as more of a mumbled giggle. I couldn't help it; hearing him laugh was music to my ears and I never wanted it to end.

"Stop apologizing." He grinned.

I didn't want to start _that_ argument again, so I didn't respond. Instead I leaned back away from him and settled myself on the bed next to him.

"Why didn't you tell me any of this?" I asked.

His smiled faded a little bit. "I've been trying to stop talking about myself so much…" He began, sounding like saying it made him realize how stupid it was. "I guess I just figured other people's' issues should be more important to me than my own."

He looked away again. I reached up and tilted his chin back towards me.

"Nothing is more important to me than you" I said.

He blushed, lifting up his glasses a little to wipe away his tears.

He looked like he wanted to say something but didn't know what. "You can tell me anything," I told him. He still didn't say anything.

Suddenly he threw his arms around me and hugged me tightly. "I'm sorry," he whispered into my ear. I hugged him back even tighter. I could feel his heart pounding in sync with mine as I whispered back that it was okay, and everything would be fine.

If I could tell him that, I had to be able to believe it myself. I think I was finally starting to, as long as nothing else happened to convince me otherwise. I pulled away and looked at him again. He had stopped crying and a smile was quickly working its way back onto his face.

"We should go get ready to head out once they figure out the riddle," I said "Are you okay?"

He nodded. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Yeah, of course, I'm fine."

"Well I don't want you blowing up on Karkat again, he has enough trouble as it is."

"Relax, I'm fine," I insisted, getting up and walking towards the door.

He followed me. "I don't think you're really mad at him, you know."

I turned back to face him. "Well why else would I have yelled at him?"

"I think you're just looking for someone to blame."


	34. Chapter 34

**Jade**

Dear Diary,

It's been two days since we left the trolls' hotel to go look for Eridan. Apparently we're almost there, but it sure has felt like a long time! It's crazy how getting from one place to another can seem so fast until you put in a bunch of… well, obstacles. We haven't been making a lot of headway every day because we have to take breaks to make sure we're in fighting shape.

I haven't really talked to you in a while now that I think about it! You probably have no idea what I'm talking about with all this "looking for Eridan" stuff (or at least you would if you were a sentient being and not just a diary). Well, a couple days before we left, Jake and Roxy arrived! We were all really surprised since Jane and Dirk had been saying they were dead, but it turns out Roxy really did just get lost, and she found Jake along the way! He got bitten, but he survived because he was made immune by some stuff Roxy made at the lab where they woke up.

We found out what happened to Rose, though. Apparently she and Roxy got caught in a really big mob of zombies and she didn't make it. It took us a while to get over losing her, but we've been trying to remember to just keep moving on and everything will be fine!

We also know how we got here in the first place. Karkat went to go see his denizen and it gave him a choice where one of the options was going somewhere where we wouldn't have to worry about Sburb ever again. His heart was in the right place when he chose to do it, but he should have paid more attention to the fact that his denizen was being mysteriously vague about the whole thing. Some of us got really mad at him for keeping it a secret so long, but apparently we can fix it by solving a riddle that leads us to some place that can teleport us out of here! It turns out we're looking for the top floor of a big business building. But we can't get out of here unless we have everyone who is still alive with us, which means before we go there we have to hunt down the trolls' friend Eridan that ran away a long time ago. Luckily Dirk had seen him and knew where we can find him.

Now we're on our way there, but nobody is really too excited to see him. Most of us hate him, and I think the only thing stopping us from leaving him behind is the fact that we need him if we want to get out. We've been pretty good at fighting zombies though! Even with there being a _lot_ more of them lately, it helps to have such a big group. We haven't gotten much more than a couple scrapes and bruises, and some of the others seem to think it's fun! I don't see how something like that could ever be considered enjoyable, but to each their own I guess.

Either way, we found a suspiciously empty supermarket to rest in. Everything that we could possibly use is gone, and all that's left is useless junk (although some of it could be considered useful for keeping us entertained). At least we get some time to rest up, although we got here yesterday and we're getting ready to head out again soon. I guess I'll talk to you again next time we stop to rest!

-Jade

I looked up from my diary just in time to see Jake walking over and taking a seat on the floor next to me. "So how are you doing?" he asked.

"Alright." I smiled. "I've just been writing in my diary, it really helps organize everything when things are so confusing, you know?"

"Well I can't say I do, but I'll take your word for it!" He laughed.

"So where's Dirk?" I asked. I could barely remember the last time I had seen them apart.

For a split second he looked shocked by the question. When he went back to his casual friendly expression. I could still see he was blushing a little. "Oh, he just went to go grab his things from the back, he should only be a minute," he said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Why do you ask?"

I raised an eyebrow at him.

"What?" He asked, starting to blush even more.

"Come on," I teased, laughing at how flustered he was getting. There was nobody around; we were sitting by the checkout counters in the front of the store and everyone else was off goofing around somewhere else.

"What- I- no!" He sputtered, now completely red in the face.

I laughed. "Jake seriously, even Terezi can see there's something going on with you two, and even if I didn't already know, your acting is crap!"

"Fine," he sighed. "We're together."

I squealed. "I knew it! You guys are _so cute_ together!"

"Thanks?"

"So is it serious?" I asked, eager to hear everything he would tell me about it because, really, what else did I have to do?

"I- I think so?" He stuttered. Clearly he had no idea how to describe a relationship.

"Well do you really like him?" I asked.

"Yes of course, he's amazing!" He said without hesitation. I giggled. _Oh my gosh he is so in love._

"What else?"

"What do you mean what else?!"

"What do you like so much about him?!" I demanded.

"Oh, well uh… He's just a great guy! He's always trying to do what's right, and putting others before himself…"

He rambled on and on about Dirk's personality and how wonderful he thought he was. It was probably the most adorable thing I had ever heard and I was mentally squealing so much that if it was out loud I would probably break a window. I think I had been hanging out with Nepeta too much.

"And?" I asked when he stopped.

"And what?!"

"Aaaaaaand?"

He still wasn't understanding what I was trying to get him to admit. "And what?!"

"And do you think he's hot?" I whispered.

"Wh- I don't think I'm comfortable answering that question!" He blurted, his face turning red again.

"Come on Jake, you can tell me!" I insisted.

"I…"

"Jake… Do you think he's hot?"

"Absolutely."

I burst out in a fit of giggles. I just shipped them so much! _Oh man, I really_ do _need to stop hanging out with Nepeta._

"Okay, enough is enough Jade!" He insisted, trying to keep me quiet unless someone could hear us. But I couldn't stop giggling.

"What about you?" He asked.

That was enough to shut me up. "What _about_ me?" I asked nervously.

"There aren't any fellas you've taken a romantic interest in?" He asked.

 _Oh my god what were those words that just came out of his mouth?_

"No," I answered, "pretty much all the guys around here are complete idiots." I was telling the truth, but it still felt like a question I didn't want to answer. It was like I was hiding my feelings for someone, but I really _hadn't_ had that kind of feelings for anyone. The last time I had was when I was with Davesprite, and although he was great and I would give anything to have a relationship like that with him again, I was pretty much over it by now.

"Really? What about…" He paused a moment to think, causing an awkward silence between us.

"Huh, I guess I see your point," he finally said. I laughed.

"Hey," I suddenly heard and looked up to see Dirk walking up behind Jake, who turned around to see him too.

 _Oh no, did he hear our conversation?_ I panicked for a second, but he didn't seem to have noticed anything, at least not by the expression on his face. Although to be fair, I could never tell anything about him by looking at his face.

"You might want to get back there; it's getting kind of insane," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked, getting to my feet. He opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly we heard a loud shriek coming from the back of the store.

"That's what I mean."

We all followed the scream to the back. I stopped in my tracks when I saw the scene unfolding before us. Dirk was right: it was absolute chaos.

Everything was completely covered in what looked like shaving cream. Everyone had a can of it, and they were basically in all-out war spraying it all over each other.

 _Of course. Of course shaving cream is one of the only things we find here._

They were all running up and down the aisles with it when suddenly I heard another scream coming from behind me. I turned around to see Karkat sitting in a shopping cart barreling towards me.

"Watch out!" I heard Dave yell from down the aisle. I jumped out of the way and Karkat rolled past me and right into a shelf that came crashing down on impact, only sending more cans of shaving cream clattering to the floor.

There was a mix of screaming and laughter, and Dave quickly ran over to help Karkat up. "Sorry Jade!" He called, but I was too busy dying of laughter to be mad at him.

"Of course, you apologize to Jade and not the one you just pushed into the damn wall!" Karkat shouted.

"Oh Karkat-senpai, I apologize for my disrespectful conduct and beg forgiveness from your royal shouty-ness," he said sarcastically. Karkat looked less than amused and muttered some... very anger-specific words.

Before I got the chance to say anything, I felt something hit the back of my neck. I whipped around and saw Jake standing there with a bottle of shaving cream, now pointing it at Dirk, who was distracted by something in the other direction.

He sprayed him with it, just before I grabbed a bottle off the floor and broke the seal.

"What the- Jake, what the hell?!" Dirk yelled as he turned around to see him. But his irritated expression quickly turned into a mischievous smirk as he grabbed a bottle too and started chasing him down the aisles. "You don't mess with the hair!" He laughed.

Well now with Jake gone, who was I supposed to spray with this? Suddenly, John came sliding past me, more covered in shaving cream than everyone else. He glanced behind him as he ran, and I looked in the direction he came to notice Jane covered almost as much as him and chasing him with a bottle. When she got to where I was standing, I joined her and took off running towards John.

"Meet him around!" She shouted when John ducked into another aisle. She followed him and I ran down the aisle next to his and got to the other side just in time to jump on top of him and tackle him to the ground.

"Jade!" He laughed.

I sprayed a tiny pile of shaving cream onto his nose and giggled. That's when Jane came up behind him and gave him a lot more. I got off of John and ran away before he could try to get his revenge. If there's one thing we've all learned, it's not to mess with the Egbert-Crockers.

On my way to wherever I thought I was going, I skidded to a stop in front of the Halloween aisle. It was probably the only aisle that was mostly full. Maybe there was something there I could use to take this battle to the next level. Suddenly I saw something: a shelf completely filled with plastic pumpkins.

 _Perfect_.

"Who threw that pumpkin?!" I heard Karkat yell from next to the shelf I had climbed up on.

"What pumpkin?!" I giggled. I had a stack of them next to me on top of the shelf, where I had a perfect view of most of the battle taking place. I started tossing them at other people, hearing lots of laughter and an occasional shriek of surprise. When I ran out, I climbed down carefully and went to check on my victims.

It turns out they had found multiple uses for the pumpkins. Some of them were rolling them in puddles of shaving cream, knocking the others down like bowling pins. Vriska had stuck one of them on Tavros's horn, and I helped him get it off before yelling at her. Some people were putting holes in the bottom and filling them with shaving cream to chuck at walls and explode in a gooey mess. Even Kanaya was joining the fight, lobbing pumpkins at some of the others, which I quickly warned her might not be the safest idea.

 _Maybe this wasn't such a good plan_ , I thought. Suddenly, a voice broke the chaos. "Guys!" Roxy yelled from on top of a shelf. A pumpkin flew towards her from somewhere I couldn't see, and she yelped and ducked. "Woah, you could have killed me!"

"Sorry!" A voice called back. It was Dirk. Of course.

"We have to get going soon, the sun came up hour ago!" She yelled. Everyone slowed their fighting down to a stop. "We need to get all this cleaned up, and don't leave any shaving cream lying around! This stuff is surprisingly flammable; it could catch the whole place on fire!" She warned.

She was right; I knew first-hand that that much shaving cream was enough to make the whole store burst into flames.

Which of course, after we had cleaned up the best we could and left the building, was exactly what happened.

"Whose idea was that again?" Equius asked.

A couple of the other trolls pointed at Vriska, who refused to fess up.

 _Why am I not surprised?_


	35. Chapter 35

**Jake**

"Well, this is it," Dirk said.

We were standing in front of a CVS, crowded in the street with a suspiciously low number of zombies that we had taken care of quickly. The building looked rather run down; not the kind of place I would have gathered someone like Eridan would want to stay in, from what Dirk and the others told me about him.

"GET OUT HERE YOU HIPSTER PIECE OF-" While Karkat was busy shouting profanities at the building for three minutes straight, I looked around to see that everyone looked nervous. I guess Eridan really _was_ as much of a jerk as they had made him sound. Nobody wanted to have him back with the team. Well, except maybe Karkat.

"He's not answering," Feferi said.

" _Nooooo_ , I hadn't noticed!" He shouted back. He walked over to me and grabbed one of my pistols out of my hand.

He groaned and headed inside, cursing and muttering under his breath the whole way there. Now we were all worried. What if Eridan got mad at him again and tried to kill him? What if he already left and the building was overrun with zombies? What if-

 _"_ _BANG!"_

We all held our breaths.

"What the hell was that?!" Vriska gasped.

A full minute of silence followed. We weren't sure what happened, and none of us wanted to try going inside to find out. We looked around at each other's' petrified faces, and it was clear that everyone, even Vriska, was seriously concerned.

Finally, Dave tightened his grip on his sword and started walking towards the door to the CVS. But before he could reach it, it swung open and Karkat stepped out, panting and covered in blood.

Violet blood.

"Oh my cod..." Feferi whispered to herself beside me, cupping her hands over her mouth.

"That freaking idiot got himself killed," Karkat muttered, handing me back my gun and continuing down the street without even looking at us.

"W-what?" Feferi stuttered.

"The whole place is crawling with zombies, and he was stupid enough to turn into one of them!" he explained without turning around.

"Karkat are you-"

"I'm _fine_ Dave, just- let's keep going."

"Maybe we should take a break," Jade said, "Just one more block then we find somewhere to stop?"

Everyone agreed, and Karkat begrudgingly had to because the rest of us had.

I turned back to Dirk. To my surprise he was shaking, and his face seemed stuck in a state of permanent shock.

"Are you alright?" I asked him, deliberately walking a couple steps behind the others so I could talk to him.

He looked up at me and quickly regained his composure, starting to walk faster so he could catch up with the group. "Yeah," he muttered.

I grabbed his wrist. "No, really Dirk. We've been over this, you know you can talk to me," I insisted.

"I don't _want_ to," he said, "I know exactly what you're going to say and I know you're just going to get mad at me for not listening."

"No I won't, Dirk, _please."_

He yanked his hand away from me and sighed. "Fine."

He paused for a minute, trying to come up with something to say. "Can you just stop looking at me like that?" He finally asked.

"Like what?!"

"You're too adorable and it offends me," he said. It was obvious he was looking for ways to stall, but he was blushing and sounded completely non-sarcastic for once so it was impossible for me to be mad at him.

"What?! Just- stop, tell me what's wrong. Of course we're all really upset that he died, but pretty much all of us hated him; why is it bothering you so much?"

He crossed his arms and looked away from me.

"Dirk…"

He mumbled something. "What was that?"

He said it again, only barely more audible than the last time.

"Dirk seriously-"

"This is _my fault_ , okay?" He whispered.

 _Not this again._ "No it isn't! I understand the fact that you have backwards methods of blaming yourself for things that aren't your fault, but there's no way you're responsible for _this_!"

" _Yes, I am._ This is _exactly_ what I was talking about when I said I didn't want to tell you,"

He was trying his best to keep his voice down and not let the others know something was going on, but I could hear that his words were being muttered through gritted teeth. I was being quiet too, but I'm surprised they couldn't hear me. "I'm sorry, I'm just saying the truth! How could this _possibly_ be because of you?!"

"I _knew_ he would die here the moment I met him," he explained, "I tried getting him to come with me but he didn't want to. In the end, I gave up too soon, and… now he had to pay the price for it. I don't care how much of an insufferable jerk he was or how little I wanted him near me, he was still another life that _I_ screwed up on trying to save."

"But- but you couldn't have gotten him to come with you, he was too stubborn! At least you tried!"

"I didn't try _hard enough._ "

"You tried as hard as you could, that's all that matters!"

"It wasn't enough! It doesn't matter how hard you try if trying doesn't _do_ anything! The point wasn't to _'do my best'_ or whatever, it was to save that idiot from his own stupidity, and I couldn't do that! Trying hard isn't going to get you anywhere unless you actually get results! And if you _fail_ like I did, that responsibility is on you! So I'm sorry you thought I did nothing wrong, but it turns out I'm entirely to blame!"

I couldn't believe what he was saying. "Well in that case, it's _my_ fault that you keep thinking all these bad things about yourself! I've been _trying_ to get you to realize that you're wrong, but you still insist on blaming yourself for everyone else's problems! Well I'm sorry then, because apparently, even though I'm trying _as much as I possibly can_ , it's all _my fault_ that it's not working!"

"Wha- no!" He said. He sounded like he was finally realizing how little sense he was making, but it was hard to be sure.

"Well according to what you just told me, it is!" I said.

"No it's not, I mean- well- you-"

"Am I wrong?"

"Ye- No- I don't even know anymore!"

He looked so flustered and I could tell this was giving him an even worse existential crisis than before.

"Dirk" I sighed, "It's ok. I know you're upset and confused, and so are the rest of us. Let's just… stop talking about this for now. The important thing is to keep moving forward, no matter what life throws at us."

I smiled at him. "Yeah, I guess," he mumbled. With his usual incapability to express himself, it was hard to tell if he was actually listening to what I said and just not showing it or if he was just saying that to get me off his back.

I sighed. "Let's just get going!" I said with a fake cheerfulness, and I linked his arm with mine and dragged him ahead to walk with the others.

Maybe the torture I had to go through during all this was watching Dirk go through his. Maybe I wasn't going to have to watch someone close to me die after all. _Yeah_ , I thought, _that makes sense. We've_ got _to be done with all the death by now. Everything is going to be okay._


	36. Chapter 36

**Dirk**

 **About a week later**

 _Oh my god what was that?!_

"Oh no!"

"Oh my god!"

"What the heck just happened?!"

Everyone was shouting and freaking out, and it was only further distracting me from trying not to die. The crowd of zombies was _really thick_ , and I had to be on my guard at all times if I was going to make it out alive.

"Behind you Dirk!" Jake shouted from somewhere I couldn't even see. I whipped around and sliced my katana through the zombie practically breathing down my neck.

 _Holy crap I almost died_. I had had many near-death experiences before, but this time it was because I was too busy panicking about the loud scream we all heard moments ago.

Now we were all frantically looking around for the source while simultaneously trying not to get hurt ourselves. I was mentally listing all the voices I was hearing now. _Who was missing?_

"Jane!" I heard Roxy scream from a little bit back up the street. _Oh no_. We all slowly fought our way towards her voice where we saw Roxy fighting off zombies that were trying to get towards… Jane's body, lying bloodied and unmoving on the ground. _Oh no oh no oh no._

Roxy glanced over at us, wide-eyed with tears streaming down her face. "Help me get them away so I can check on her!" she said.

We quickly formed a circle around her and cleared the area enough for her to kneel down by Jane. Every couple seconds I was able to turn around to get a look at what was happening.

She was frozen in place, staring at Jane with a look on her face that told me something was definitely wrong.

"What's going on back there?!" I called.

She didn't answer me.

"Roxy?!" I looked back at her, panicking for a second, but she was fine. She just wasn't responding.

"Cover me!" I shouted to Dave as I ducked into the circle and ran over to Roxy.

I got on my knees next to her and looked at her face. She was sobbing and threw her arms around me the moment she saw me.

"Roxy what-"

I turned my eyes to Jane. She had deep scratches and bites all over, and her clothes were completely soaked in blood. Her eyes were closed and she didn't look like she was breathing. _No._ I carefully pushed Roxy off me and leaned over to check her pulse.

Nothing.

"No…" I whispered. She couldn't be dead. She was the one who held me together before Jake and Roxy showed up. She was the innocent one. She wasn't supposed to die. All she ever did was try to help, but now she was the one we couldn't save. The one _I_ couldn't save.

 _I_ had failed her, after everything she did for me. She tried so hard to make me see the good side of things. She told me that everything would be alright, as long as I could stop focusing on all the bad things and focus on the good.

" _There's a lot of things we can't stop in life, but we still manage to be happy anyway, right?_ " she had said, " _I figure there's good stuff and bad stuff around us all the time. And it doesn't matter how small the good stuff is, it can distract us from the bad stuff! So why not focus on the good stuff? All it will do is make us feel better. And if we feel better, we might even be able to hold up better against the bad stuff when we can't avoid it_."

Remembering what Jane said to me made me think. What if she was right? I looked at her again. Then I looked behind me at Jake, fighting off zombies just fine with still nothing but his two tiny pistols. He was still alive. After all this time, after the weeks I spent thinking I was never going to see him again, he was still here. I don't know what I would have done if he had really died. The fact that I still had him was probably the only thing keeping me somewhat sane.

That was it; that was something positive I could focus on. Jane was dead, but I couldn't let it destroy me. If I didn't have something else to drive me forward, I would be stuck in a state of regret and depression forever. That wasn't what Jane would have wanted. She would have wanted me to get up and keep going. So that's what I was going to do.

I grabbed Roxy by the arm and helped her up. "It's going to be okay," I whispered, pulling her away from Jane's body. It felt horrible to just leave her there, but there was nothing else we could do.

Just then I saw Jake look back towards us. Now he was crying too. "I-is she…"

I nodded.

 **A/N: They're done with death he said. Everything's going to be okay he said.**


	37. Chapter 37

**A/N: Quick little heads up, next weekend's chapter(s) will probably be late. Also as of reading this you're about 2/3 of the way into this story. Oh wait, Rose also wrote a little bit of this chapter. I'm like 94% sure that's the last bit she wrote.**

 **Dirk**

About an hour later, we made it out of the really bad zombie crowd and found an abandoned house to rest in. Nobody had said a single word the whole way there except to give directions. We didn't really know what to say.

Once we got inside, everyone pretty much collapsed on whatever chair or couch they could find. I sat on the kitchen counter and looked around for Jake. He had been keeping a completely blank expression since I told him Jane was dead, and he looked like he needed his space, so I gave him some. But now I _needed_ to know if he was okay. I couldn't stand just waiting for him to calm down when he could be completely freaking out.

But he was nowhere to be found. "Jake?!" I called.

"He went in there," Jade said quietly, pointing towards a door. I walked over to it and carefully stepped inside. It was a bedroom, and Jake was sitting on the side of the bed with his back to the door.

"Jake?"

I could hear him crying and it made me feel horrible. He must have been holding it in the whole time because he didn't want to cry in front of the others. I knew that feeling, but I didn't expect him to have it.

I sat next to him on the bed and put my arm around him. He wasn't looking at me; he was too busy staring at the floor and sobbing. I rested my head on his shoulder.

"Are you okay?" I asked, even though the answer was totally obvious.

"Sh- she… she's dead"

"It's gonna be okay," I whispered.

He didn't even respond. His eyes looked unfocused and I couldn't tell if he had even heard me. He was in total shock at this point, but I could tell that that wasn't stopping him from feeling the full force of his pain.

I shook him a bit and said, "Hey, Jake? I know you don't want to hear this right now, but I know how you feel. I've been there before, okay? And….it might not be okay. But that doesn't mean you can just give up. We've both got to keep going, for Jane."

At this point I'm pretty sure there were tears streaming down my face too, but I ignored them and kept staring at Jake who was finally looking me in the eyes.

Something in his eyes shattered as he said, "I…. I don't think I can deal with this Dirk. I…. I can't do this, I-"

I didn't even give him the chance to finish before I was practically tackling him in a hug. I was basically sobbing at this point and I could tell he was too because his shoulders were shaking from his own sobs.

"I know Jake, I know." I choked out, "I can't do this either. I didn't want to lose anyone else…"

All of a sudden my mind was back with Jane in that safe house we had stopped in. Back when I was being a stupid kid and she almost left. _I…. I can't lose another friend…._ I had choked, _I can't lose you, too._

I lost her.

Jake squeezed harder as if sensing my own pain.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, "I didn't even think about how you must be feeling."

I almost laughed. _Even when he's in this much pain he's still worrying about me._

I pulled back and took his shoulders as he had once done to me.

"No," I said, "You shouldn't be worrying about me right now. You've already done so much for me. You need to focus on fixing yourself now."

He hesitated, then said, "But I don't think I _can_ fix this."

I managed to smirk and replied, "Well, that's what I'm here for. What Roxy's here for. We're all going to be there for each other from now on. _No one_ is going _anywhere_ , not if I have anything to say about it."

He broke out in a smile and nodded, wiping his eyes.

"You're right," he said with a shuddering deep breath, "Janey wouldn't want us to be like this."

I smiled bitterly and said, "Yeah. We're sticking together now. We are getting out of here. For Jane."

I could tell that even though he seemed mostly okay now, he was still crying.

I didn't know what else to say, but then suddenly I remembered what Jake had told me when I was upset about Eridan dying.

"Hey, the important thing is to keep moving forward, right? No matter what life throws at us," I said.

"Now you're getting it." he laughed half-heartedly.

"Come on" I said, taking him by the hand and leading him to the door. He had finally stopped crying and I wanted to check on Roxy.

When we got out there, she was sitting on the couch talking to the cat troll until she looked at us and ran over, face bright red from crying so much, and wrapped us both in a big hug.

"How are you doing?" I asked when she finally pulled away.

"Okay," she sighed, "I've been talking to Nepeta and she's been helping me feel better. She's really sweet, like… like Jane."

Her voice cracked when she said Jane's name, and her eyes were starting to water again.

"It's ok, Roxy, we're here for you," Jake said.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," she said, wiping away her tears and forcing a smile, "I'm already starting to feel a little better, I just need some time. At least you guys are here, right?"

I nodded "A while ago, Jane told me to focus on something good instead of all the bad things. She thought it would make everything better I guess, so that's what I tried when she died, and I think it's helping me cope," I said. "Maybe you should try that."

"Yeah, maybe I will," she said.

"Me too," Jake said, "What have you been thinking about?"

He looked up at me again with those big green eyes. _He has no idea_ , I thought. _He has no idea how important he is to me_. But I could just _tell_ him, could I?

"It's… personal," I said.

For a moment he looked crushed. _Oh crap, what did I do?!_

But he quickly went back to smiling. "That's alright, I suppose it's different for everyone," he said, and I swear the way he said it made me want to kiss him right then and there. I couldn't imagine how he could possibly be so blind to how much I liked him.

"Yeah I guess."

I turned back to Roxy. "How's everyone else doing?" I asked her.

She looked around the room. "Well most of the trolls don't really care that much… But John's pretty upset. Luckily he has Jade and Dave to cheer him up, and I think it's working,"

I was relieved that there weren't more people I would have to try to calm down. I had to admit I had no idea what the hell I was doing with this stuff. Honestly it was a miracle that whatever I was doing seemed to be working.

"It's okay, no matter what happened to Jane, she's still with us," Jake smiled, "even if we can't see her, I know she's here; inside our hearts."

 _Wow_ , I thought, _he is such a dork._


	38. Chapter 38

**A/N: I hope you enjoy this little break from feels, because it's probably the last one you're going to get.**

 **Jake**

A couple days later, we had made it to yet another abandoned house. It was already getting dark because we decided to fight more than usual that day so we could get there sooner.

Dirk dropped his things onto the floor of the foyer, not caring about the noise, and collapsed sideways across the nearest chair. "I'm so sick of this," he groaned.

"Me too," John muttered as we put our things down more lightly and followed him into the living room.

"I swear if I see one more of those things I'm going to lose it," Jade said.

After a couple minutes full of more complaining, Roxy decided to interrupt one of Karkat's obligatory post-zombie-hunting rants.

"Why don't we take a break for a day?" She suggested. "We stay here all day tomorrow and leave early the next morning. I think that's what we all need, right?"

We all nodded. Nobody was going to disagree with that after a nonstop pattern of fight, sleep, fight, sleep for what felt like weeks on end.

"It'll give us all a chance to keep our sanity," she said, glaring not-so-subtly at Dirk, who made an unamused noise and continued staring at the ceiling.

"Well what exactly do you expect us to _do_?" Karkat asked impatiently.

Roxy paused for a minute before her face lit up. "I think I have an idea!" She said, pulling her backpack off and shuffling through it.

 _I swear if she takes out those cards again…_

"Who knows how to play war?!" She called.

"Roxy not again!" I shouted. She sighed and put the pack of cards back in her bag.

"Well what else do you suggest we do?" She asked, sounding very disappointed. I felt sort of bad, but she really needed to give it a rest. It seemed like every five minutes she was whipping those things out to try and lighten the mood, and it wasn't quite working anymore.

We all shrugged, and Nepeta dropped onto the floor and started rolling around. We glanced at her for a second, then looked away because by now we were used to Nepeta just being Nepeta.

"Well if nobody has anything to do that's worth my time, I'm going to bed," Karkat said, turning to walk down the hallway.

Suddenly Nepeta gasped and jumped up to whisper something in Equius's ear. He gave her a look like he was tired of her nonsense but didn't want to complain.

"Nepeta would like to request that we play a game," he sighed.

"As I said, if nobody has anything to do that's _worth my time_ , bye!" Karkat moaned.

"Oh shut up Karkat!" Roxy said, impressing all of us by the fact that she dared to yell back at him. "What game?" she asked Nepeta.

"Hide and seek?"

Roxy gasped. "Yes! We're doing it!" She decided with no input from the others. "You, me, and Equius can seek first! Counting to thirty, go!"

"What?" I thought out loud. But everyone was already dashing out of the room to go hide and Roxy, Nepeta, and Equius were already turned to face the wall counting. Dave was dragging Karkat out of the room by the collar of his shirt, and all of a sudden it was just me and Dirk.

I looked over at him. He was still draped across the chair not paying attention.

"Dirk, let's go!" I said, running over to him.

"Do I have to?" He asked.

Dirk was having another one of what we liked to call his "emo days" today, which more or less consisted of him sitting around complaining and not wanting to do anything. But I wasn't going to let him be like that today. It was our one day to rest; he couldn't just waste it by whining the whole time.

"Yes you do, come _on_!"

I yanked on his arm to pull him off the chair. Instead of cooperating and getting up, he fell to the floor.

"Dirk let's _go_ , we're going to run out of time!"

He groaned and finally stood up. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him out of the room and down the hallway. I slipped into the first room I could find, dragging Dirk inside despite the fact that he was slowing me down.

It was a lounge, with painted brown walls, a big flat-screen tv, a coffee table with books piled on top, and a couch. I brought him over to the couch and looked behind it. There was just enough room for the two of us.

 _Perfect._

I pushed him behind the couch despite his protests and crouched down beside him. Now we were safe, but he still didn't seem to be having any fun. He was still staring straight ahead at the back of the couch with a look on his face like I had just pushed him into a pool in his pajamas. I sighed.

Suddenly I got an idea. I scooted closer so I was right next to him, then leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

His face instantly went bright red and I saw his seemingly permanent stoic frown start to disappear.

I smiled at him. " _Now_ will you play the game?" I asked.

He turned to me and half-smiled back, reaching his hand up to my face.

"Fine."

Suddenly he leaned forward and kissed me fully on the lips. My eyes widened in surprise but after a moment I closed them and kissed him back. I had not expected that to work, but I was more than glad that it did.

Regardless of whether it helped him or not, it helped me too. When Dirk kissed me, the nagging layer of stress I was constantly feeling from all this zombie mayhem seemed to disappear. It was like I was in a completely different world, and I could forget all about the pressure of real life and focus on the way he made me feel. Kissing him gave me the best feeling in the world, unlike anything else I had ever experienced, and I never wanted it to end.

"Wow, you guys really suck at this game!"

We quickly pulled away from each other and looked up to find Roxy leaning over the back of the couch.

"Roxy, what the hell?!" Dirk shouted. His face was completely red, and I assume mine was too.

She tapped us each on the head. "Found you and found you!" she laughed.

We climbed out from behind the couch. But Dirk wasn't done being embarrassed. "For crying out loud Roxy, you don't do that!" He said.

"Shhhhh!" She whispered, "I'm trying to forget I ever saw that and you're not helping."

Dirk stopped talking, but he went back to looking like he was mad at everything. This time, though, I could tell it wasn't him being genuinely mad at everything. This was more of a stubborn embarrassment-induced fake anger that would go away in a couple minutes.

I smiled to myself knowing that I had been able to fix one of his famous "Strider moods".

"Come on, let's go find the others," Roxy said, motioning for us to follow her. She took us out of the hallway and upstairs, where we went into the first room we could find. "Equius and Nepeta are taking the rest of the downstairs," she explained.

We looked around the room to see if we could find anyone. It was a cream-colored dining room, with a dining set in the center, a big window overlooking the not-so-pleasant view of the street, a Chinaware cabinet, and a doorway leading to the kitchen. Roxy and I quickly went to work looking under the table, behind the curtains, and even in the drawers of the cabinet. Nobody was there.

"Dirk, why aren't you helping?" I sighed.

Suddenly I looked over at him to see that he was staring at the room with a strange blank expression. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

He snapped out of it and rubbed his forehead. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said, "just… some weird deja vu or something." I could tell there was something more than he was letting on, but I decided to let him be for now.

"Let's keep going," he said, a little too eager to change the subject. He walked around the table to the kitchen, and we followed him without complaining.

"Well, found one," he said the moment we got inside. Both of us instantly saw who he was looking at.

It was Tavros, trying to hide behind the curtain. It was actually a pretty good spot, and we wouldn't have seen him if it wasn't for the fact that his horns were poking out the sides.

"Aw, not again," he sighed as he pulled aside the curtain and came out. I felt bad for him. With horns that big I don't think there's _anywhere_ he could hide.

"Sorry Tav," I said, "at least you can help us look for the others."

We actually spent about an hour trying to find everyone. Nepeta and Equius had found Karkat and Dave by the time we went back downstairs, and eventually we found John and Jade hiding in the bathtub, although they took a while to find. Kanaya and Feferi were fairly easy to find behind a door and under a table. The only one we were having a hard time finding was Vriska.

After about twenty minutes most of us got bored and sat down in the living room waiting for the round to be over. Only Nepeta and Equius were left looking for Vriska, and everyone else mostly just complained.

Finally, Nepeta came back into the room dragging Vriska by the hand.

"Found her!" She proclaimed.

"Where was she?!" Roxy asked, suddenly seeming interested in the game again.

"In the basement!"

"Who goes in the _basement_ in a _zombie apocalypse_?!" Dirk said.

Vriska rolled her eyes. "Someone who wants to win," she said.

"That's completely stupid," he muttered.

"Speak for yourself, you were the first one found!"

"Both of you shut up!" Roxy shouted. "Vriska's an overachiever, Dirk's mad at everything, we get it. Who's seeking next?"

Both of them looked very offended but nobody paid any attention. I raised my hand, and Jade happened to raise her's at the same time.

"Okay you two and… who else?"

I grabbed Dirk's hand and held it up. He tried to pull it down, but I wouldn't let him.

"Great. You three count to thirty. Bye!"

She ran out of the room followed by everyone else while Jade, Dirk, and I closed our eyes to count.

When we opened them thirty seconds later, we were surprised to see that while we thought Tavros was bad at hiding, some of the other trolls were way worse.

Standing right in front of us was Equius, with a lampshade on his head just barely fitting over his horns.

 _Was he serious?_

Behind him was a couch, and I could see Nepeta peeking out from underneath it.

Jade sighed, but it was Dirk who said out loud what we were all thinking.

" _God_ , trolls are weird."


	39. Chapter 39

**Dave**

"Look out!" Karkat shouted.

I spun around and took out a zombie that was almost within a dangerous distance of me. I wasn't too worried about it though; even if he hadn't warned me I would have taken care of it. Besides, I had had much worse close calls before.

We were out fighting again, and we all wanted another day-long break like the one we took a couple days ago. But we were all in agreement on the fact that we wanted to get all of this over with as soon as possible, so it was business as usual on the zombie-killing end of things.

We were in the middle of our seventh wave of the day. Karkat and I were fighting back to back, trying hard to be the first ones out of the mob. I was starting to get tired, and from the looks of it a lot of the others were ready to call it quits. But we kept going, because even if we thought we had made enough progress for the day we wouldn't be able to stop anywhere until we made it out of this section.

Suddenly I saw Jade out of the corner of my eye. She was seeming to fight off the zombies just fine using the end of her rifle, but I could see one coming up right behind her that she was completely oblivious to.

"Jade, behind you!" I shouted. She didn't hear me. _Oh no_. If she didn't move soon, it was definitely going to get her.

I started pushing my way towards her, calling her name with Karkat calling mine behind me.

Jade turned to see me. _No, don't look at me you idiot, look behind you!_

It was reaching towards her, inches away from grabbing her hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. Without thinking I jumped forward and pushed her away from it, but that didn't totally help.

The zombie grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked me backwards. Startled, I lost my grip on my sword and it clattered to the ground. I tried pulling myself away but I was still half-focused on Jade. She stumbled backwards from me pushing her and tripped over the sword.

"JADE!" I cried. But before I could see if she was able to get up, I felt another zombie grab onto my shirt and tug me back into the crowd. I couldn't see her anymore, and I had no hope of trying to get my sword back.

"Jade!" I called again. I opened my mouth to yell her name again but before I could, everything got a lot worse.

I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my shoulder shoot through my arm. I screamed. The pain was worse than anything I had ever felt, and I instantly knew what it was.

I got bitten.

I fell to my knees. This was it. I had made it so far, but now I was going to die. I tried pulling away from the zombies, but that only made my shoulder hurt more. I froze. I knew I was going to die no matter what I did; it was no use causing myself more pain than I was already in. At least I had saved Jade.

Suddenly I heard another scream.

 _No._

I blacked out.

When I came to, I was sitting in an armchair staring up at an unfamiliar room yet again. My vision was blurry, all I could hear was a faint buzzing, and my whole body was numb, but I looked around the room to see the others talking to each other with panicked looks on their faces. After a moment they looked over at me and ran over seeing that I was awake. _What's going on?_

Suddenly all my senses came back, and I was overcome with a wave of pain that shocked me into sitting bolt upright and letting out a gasp of breath that only seemed to make everyone else freak out even more.

"Strider! Are you alive?!" Karkat shouted in my face. My memory suddenly came back to me.

Oh no.

 _Ohhh nooo_.

I looked at my shoulder. It was oozing blood onto the chair and still hurt almost as much as it did when it happened. It was painfully obvious that it was a zombie bite. There was nothing else it could have been.

"Yeah, I- I'm fine. Where's Jade?" I asked.

I looked up at John, who bit his lip and looked at the others in a way that obviously meant he didn't want to tell me.

I cursed under my breath.

"I'm okay," I heard her say quietly from the other side of the room. Everyone turned around to look at her, and I could see that they hadn't known she was awake either.

They rushed over to her, and I pushed myself out of the chair to go see what happened to her. Her scream couldn't have been what I thought it was…

But it was.

Her hand was clutching her forearm and dripping with blood. I gasped when I realized what she was covering.

She hadn't made it out. She was bitten too.

It was even worse when she looked up and saw me. A realization dawned on her and she was starting to tear up. Everyone's eyes were darting from my face to her's, and it was clear nobody knew what to do.

"It's gonna be okay," John said, although he still looked like it really wasn't going to be okay. "Roxy thinks we can make it to the building they woke up in and remake the cure, right?" He said, looking up at her.

She nodded. "We should be able to get there in time, but only if we move fast."

"Then what are we waiting for?" I asked impatiently. I wanted to make sure we made it to the end of all this, and I wasn't willing to waste a minute of the time I had.

"Dave, both of you just passed out! Are you sure you can keep going right now?"

"We don't have much of a choice, right? If we don't get there in time we're dead anyway. I'll be fine," I said, looking at Jade in the hopes that she would say the same thing.

She nodded. "Me too."

Roxy sighed. "We'll cover you two," she said, "but we should at least wait an hour."

I didn't want to wait an hour. I was dizzy and in a lot of pain and felt like I was going to throw up, and I wanted it to end as soon as possible. But after Jade agreed I had to agree. I didn't want to sound like the stubborn jerk I knew I was really being.

I sighed. "It's alright," John said to me with a half-smile, "we're _going_ to make it there and everyone's going to be okay."

 **A/N: Bad place to leave off, I know. But like I said a couple chapters ago there's a 98% chance that I can't upload anything this weekend. Family stuff. So… see you Monday probably!**


	40. Chapter 40

**A/N: Turns out what I was doing today took less time than I expected, so here's a chapter for you! There's only ten left. Wow.**

 **Dirk**

It was strange walking back into the research facility after all this time. There were barely any zombies outside compared to what we had gotten used to the past couple days.

It was like playing Pokémon and going back to Twinleaf Town after beating the Elite Four. Everything was just where I left it and I wanted to laugh at my past self for thinking I had it rough. The only difference was it didn't feel like I was going back home after a long adventure. It felt more like I was finally reaching a hospital after getting repeatedly stabbed in the chest.

We all went upstairs to the main part of the building taking our time, except Roxy, who, after I gave her the paper with the research we had taken when Jake spilled the cure on his arm, ran upstairs and went right to work.

Everyone was in much better spirits about getting here, even Dave and Jade. They all seemed to have complete faith that Roxy would be able to remake the cure. I mostly did too, but I was preoccupied with thinking about something that has been bothering me ever since Dave got bitten.

His bite was in the same exact place as it was in the hallucination I had a while ago. Of course it could have just been a weird coincidence; but if it was, it wouldn't be the first.

When I was having those flashes of memories, there was another scene that didn't fit. Right before I saw Dave dying, I was in a room I didn't recognize talking to Jake and Roxy. When we were playing hide and seek, we had stopped in a dining room to look for people. That room looked _exactly_ like the one in the hallucination.

I shook it off as a coincidence back then, but now I wasn't so sure. Was there some way that the things I saw were actually some kind of visions of the future? And if they were, did that mean Dave was going to die?

Why didn't I tell them about the hallucinations? If they knew he was going to get bitten, we could probably have done something more to prevent it. Then a horrible realization hit me. If something _did_ happen to him, it would be all _my_ fault for not telling them.

No, that couldn't be possible. There was no way I had seen the future; that was impossible. Besides, we knew Dave was going to survive, Roxy was making the cure right now!

But I wasn't sure if I really didn't believe it was possible or if I just didn't _want_ to believe it. Besides, what was I supposed to tell them? They would just think I was crazy!

 _No_ , I insisted. This wasn't real. I was just mixing up my dreams with my reality again, I _had_ to be.

Suddenly Roxy came running in carrying two syringes of pink liquid. "I got it!" She called.

Everyone perked up and she set the syringes down on the table.

"Really?!" Jake grinned.

"Well, kind of," she said.

The smiles on our faces started to fade. "What do you mean _kind of_?" Dave asked.

"Well I didn't have enough of everything so I had to replace some things, but it should work just fine," she explained. He relaxed a little.

"But it's not going to work exactly the same. The first one didn't need to be injected, and it would work on anyone before or after a bite. This one… well, first of all, I have to give it to you in this thing," she said, tapping the syringe. "Second… it might not work. There's something in here that's only compatible with certain strands in some people's DNA. So it's either gonna work in an hour or two, or it's just going to extend the amount of time you have before you…" She trailed off.

Of course. Of course it wasn't going to work. I didn't know why I had expected anything else.

"Well what if it doesn't work?!" Jade asked, freaking out even more than the rest of us.

Roxy looked guilty and opened her mouth to speak, but Jake interrupted her.

"It's _going_ to work," he insisted. I could tell he was the only one in the room that really believed it, but that was kind of his thing so I wasn't too surprised.

"Yeah," Roxy said, smiling weakly at Jake.

"Let's just get this over with." Jade sighed.

Roxy grabbed one of the syringes off the table and told Jade to hold out her arm. She cringed away from it and squeezed her eyes shut. When Roxy injected the cure, she let out a small shriek.

"Sorry," she said quietly once it was over, "I just really don't like needles."

"Well, would you rather die?!" Karkat asked sarcastically.

"Shut up, Karkat!" Terezi yelled at him. He gave her a dirty look and turned away.

Next up was Dave. He lifted up what was left of the sleeve of his shirt and watched Roxy carefully as she gave him the cure, barely flinching when the needle went into his skin. I didn't want to think of what kind of childhood trauma he went through that would have given him that kind of resistance to pain, not that I didn't already know.

"Well now what?" He asked, "I'm not feeling any better."

"Well it's not just gonna work instantly, you have to give it time!" Roxy said defensively.

"Well how will we know if it's working?" I asked.

She frowned, eyes scanning over the papers one more time but not seeming to find anything.

"We'll just have to wait and see."


	41. Chapter 41

**A/N: Well we're getting pretty close to the end of the story now. This took me… 231 days…so… 7 months and 18 days to write. Yeah, I'm feeling very sentimental. Oh well. Super short chapter today. Enjoy!**

 **Jade**

Dear Diary,

We're almost to the building where we can end the apocalypse! In other good news, the cure Roxy made seems to be working! Or at least… it is for me.

It was only a couple days ago that I was bitten, but I'm already feeling almost completely better! The bite is already almost gone, and it feels more like a bruise now. I started going back to fighting through the zombies instead of being guarded by the others on the sidelines.

Dave on the other hand… well he's not doing so well. He keeps insisting that the bite hurts less, but it's only stopped bleeding a little bit. He hasn't gone back to fighting like I have, and he's been looking really sick lately. It's hard to tell if he's really getting better or if he's just acting tough. Honestly I'm not sure even he knows the difference.

But it's been longer than 24 hours since we were bitten, so the cure has to be working at least a little bit. Nobody really knows what to expect now, but we keep insisting that he's going to be fine. Roxy said the cure might just take longer to work on different people. But if that's the case, it's taking a _really_ long time for Dave.

I'm sure he'll be fine. Even if he was going to turn, we've estimated that we should be out of here by tomorrow. The infection _has_ to go away after that.

Everyone's been managing to keep in surprisingly good spirits though, despite that. The only two people who've been really upset lately are Karkat and Dirk. But Dirk has been pretty moody about everything, so that's nothing new. Besides, he usually has Jake to cheer him up. I thought he was just upset about Dave, but it kind of seems like he's hiding something. Then again, I can never understand that guy. I leave Dirk's weirdness for Jake to handle.

As for Karkat, it's definitely Dave that he's upset about. Every time someone dies he gets even more unpleasant than usual, but with Dave it seems to be lasting longer. They've been spending a lot of time together away from us, and I can't help but wonder what that's about.

We've been trying to stop for rests less, but with Dave injured that bad it's been hard. At least everyone is more than happy to play games and talk to each other when we're not fighting. Although with some of us (I'm not saying I'm talking about Vriska, but I'm talking about Vriska) preferring to gossip about each other and meddle with people, we've been doing a lot more talking than playing, and some of it has turned into a lot of harmless but sometimes hurtful teasing.

Anyway, we're heading out tomorrow to get to the business building, and we should be able to get there by the afternoon. I can't wait to finally get out of all this mess! I'm not sure how much longer any of us can take here.

Well, I'm probably not going to be able to write in here anymore since we'll be there tomorrow, so this is where the diary ends I guess. Hopefully we can get there before we lose anyone else. What am I saying? I _know_ we can!

Everything's going to be just fine! 3


	42. Chapter 42

**Jake**

Finally, we had made it. I had to admit, I was worried we weren't going to survive this long without someone completely losing their mind.

Well, Dirk kind of did, but I'm not sure I would count that as "losing it". I was still able to pull him back to us when he was drifting off into his emotional despair, but I was sure that one more disaster would have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Luckily we made it here just in time.

It seemed like we made it just in time for Dave too. We were all thanking the heavens that he was still with us. Unfortunately, he hadn't been recovering much, and we all knew the cure wasn't going to save him, we just didn't want to admit it. But now it looked like we wouldn't have to.

We still had to hurry though so we didn't make him go through his pain any longer than he had to. He was _really_ sick, and if he had gotten bitten a minute sooner I don't think he would have made it this far. Karkat had helped him along for most of the trip here since he couldn't walk very well, and even now we could tell he was having trouble breathing.

"Okay, so now the riddle basically said to go to the most important room in the place," Karkat said, reading from the note. John walked over to the lobby counter and picked up a pamphlet that seemed to be a map of the building.

"Where's that?" He asked.

"I don't know, I'm not the human here! I don't even know what this place is; you tell me!" He shouted at him impatiently.

John shrunk back. "Uh.. I don't know…" He mumbled, checking the map again. "Geez, this place is like a labyrinth. Nobody get lost or you may never be found!"

Finally, he found something. "Maybe it's the CEO's office?" He guessed.

Karkat grabbed the map from him and held a hand up. "Great, everyone follow me!" He called, walking towards the stairs.

As we followed him I linked arms with Dirk and smiled up at him.

"We did it!" I told him, "We're finally getting out of here!"

"Yeah, I guess we are." He sighed happily.

"Everything's going to be okay now! I told you."

"What, do you want me to apologize for not believing you?" He laughed.

I nodded. "Yes, I think you actually owe all of us an apology for your attitude throughout all of this."

He smiled and pulled me closer, kissing the top of my head. "Well then I'm sorry. How's that for a start?"

I smiled at him, but before I could say anything Karkat started screaming again.

"GET MOVING SLOWPOKES!"

We let go of each other's arms and ran forward to catch up with the others. Apparently we had been too distracted by each other to realize how far behind the group we were.

We kept walking through the rooms and hallways in the building until Karkat stopped us all because he had no idea where he was going. While they were all trying to figure out the map, I looked around the empty room and saw that Dirk was doing the same. But he seemed to be looking at it in fear, and for some reason he kept glancing back at Dave.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"N-nothing" he stuttered, obviously just trying to shrug me off him.

 _What is it this time?!_ I really thought he would be done with all this by now. We were almost there! What else could possibly happen?

But before I could insist that he tell me, you-know-who started screaming at us again.

"STOP STARING OFF INTO SPACE AND COME HELP US FIGURE OUT THIS STUPID MAP YOU LAZY LOAD GAPERS!"

Dirk quickly wiped the concern off his face and resumed his typical disinterested expression. We went over to help Karkat and John figure out the map, but we basically just stood there while they yelled at each other.

Suddenly I heard a strained voice from outside the circle.

"Guys…"

We turned around in the direction of the voice and Jade gasped.

Dave was bleeding more than usual, and the blood was everywhere. He was leaning against the wall, his hand gripping his wounded shoulder as if that would make it any better. He looked like he was in complete agony, and we watched in horror as he tried to push himself off the wall. Suddenly we knew exactly what was going on. Dave had been holding out way too long. He wasn't going to make it.

 _Oh no._

I glanced away from Dave and looked at Dirk. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were opened so wide that I could almost see them behind his shades. He was visibly shaking and slowly backing away from the rest of us to the back of the room.

 _Was he going to be okay?_

Before I could try to comfort him, I was distracted by Dave starting to cough. He didn't stop coughing, and everyone was just looking at him in fear. Nobody knew what to do.

Suddenly Karkat ran towards him, but Vriska grabbed him and pulled him back.

"You'll only get yourself hurt" she told him in a nonchalant tone that made me feel even more sick to my stomach.

With Karkat giving up, we just stood there crying and knowing there was nothing we could do. Dave's knees buckled and he collapsed on the floor, still choking on what was probably his own blood. I looked around for Dirk again, but the moment I turned around he was escaping out the door and slamming it behind him. I wanted to get away from all this and go find him, but I figured it was best to leave him alone for a little bit.

After a couple more moments of horrified silence, Karkat decided he couldn't take it. He ran forward, pushing past the others, and knelt down next to Dave.

He lifted up Dave's head and his coughing was starting to die down. It was hard to tell what was going on, but it looked like Karkat was hugging him tightly and muttering something we couldn't make out.

My heart shattered. I didn't know Dave well enough to be _as_ sad as everyone else was, but what if it was Dirk that was dying? Was this how he had felt when we thought I was going to die?

Suddenly everything was silent.

"No…" Karkat whispered.

Anyone who was managing to keep their eyes mostly dry at this point burst into tears.

Dave was dead.

Karkat didn't take his eyes off him. He stayed there nearly-silently sobbing while we watched in disbelief and despair. Finally, Kanaya ran forward and gently tried to pull him away, whispering something too quietly for me to hear.

Karkat still wouldn't budge. Vriska pushed her way to the front of the crowd and sighed, rolling her eyes, which to my surprise, seemed to be completely empty of tears. She grabbed Karkat by the shoulder and shoved him away from Dave, lightly kicking his body to make sure he was still dead.

"Ok everyone, let's get out of here before he comes back," she said.

We were too frozen to move but she pushed us all towards the door, keeping a watchful eye on Dave's body. We eventually managed to tear our eyes from the sight and leave the room, but none of us wanted to leave Dave. We couldn't even handle the fact that he was dead.

At least there was one upside to turning our back on Dave's body: I could find out if Dirk was okay.

 **A/N: I listened to the piano version of This is Gospel while editing this scene. That was a bad idea. This whole scene was a bad idea. This whole** ** _story_** **was a bad idea.**


	43. Chapter 43

**A/N: From the comments I got on the last chapter (3 of them, wow), I'm not sure but I** ** _think_** **you guys weren't too happy with the last chapter. It's ok, I was in pain writing it too. Well, I can't say this one will be much better. Here ya go!**

 **Dirk**

 _Dave is dying. Dave is dying and it's all my fault._

I saw the signs. I knew this was going to happen. But I didn't say anything. We could have done more to keep him safe if I told them what was going to happen. But I _didn't._ I was too worried about what everyone would think of my sanity to do what I had to do to save him.

So I told myself nothing was wrong. But I _knew_ something was wrong. I was just too scared to admit it. And now Dave had to pay for that decision with his _life_.

That's why I had to leave the room. First it was the splitting headache I got the second I recognized it from my hallucination. Then it was the realization of what that meant I had done.

There was no way I could watch him die again. The first time was torture, and it would be even worse when I knew it was real and I knew it was my fault.

Of course this was happening _now_. Right when we were about to end all of this. Why did I think I could escape all the suffering? I was doing mostly fine before. I had Jake to calm me down when things got rough, and I was even starting to learn to help myself.

But now I was realizing that none of the problems ever actually went away. I was still the same miserable failure of a kid I had always been, and that's all I ever would be. I was only pretending not to be. I was just tricking myself into believing a lie so I didn't have to disappoint others with the truth.

I leaned up against the wall, tears streaming down my face. I fought back the urge to punch through the wall to let out my rage, but that only made me cry more. There was nothing I could do; the damage was already done. I slid down the wall and sat on the floor.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and cried more, sliding my hands under my shades to rub my eyes.

Suddenly the door swung open and everyone started piling out. I watched them out of the corner of my eye without picking my head up. I really didn't want to talk to anyone right now. But I didn't have to talk to them to know exactly what their solemn tone was implying.

It was over. Dave was dead.

"Dirk, are you okay?" Roxy asked, breaking away from the group walking down the hallway to come over and talk to me. She squatted down and asked me again, but I didn't answer, only burying my face deeper into my hands.

Finally, Jake came out of the room and ran over to me. "Are you alright Dirk?" He asked.

 _Oh no_. He was probably the person I least wanted to talk to right now. Even though he usually found a way to fix me when I was feeling like this, I just felt too guilty this time. I couldn't face him.

So I didn't. Jake told Roxy he would catch up with her in a minute, and when she sighed and left he sat down next to me but I stayed silent. His voice told me he was still crying and it gave me physical pain to hear it.

"Dirk, it's okay to be sad, but you can talk to me about it," he said.

 _No I can't,_ I thought. I would never forgive myself for what I did, and I would never expect him to either. I ruined everything at the last second. I _made_ Dave die. This was _serious_ , more serious than all the other horrible mistakes I had made. This was a _life_ I had messed up. It couldn't get much worse than that.

The sad thing was I wasn't really all that surprised. I was always screwing up someone's life wherever I went. It was only a matter of time before I ended one. That was the kind of person I was. Everyone I met I damaged in some way, no matter what twisted universe or alternate timeline it was in. It didn't matter how much I wanted to prove I was something more than a dysfunctional damaging mess, I just _wasn't._ Everyone I knew was doomed to be ruined, whether physically or emotionally.

Including Jake.

But Jake was different, right? He wasn't just someone I knew; he was someone I _loved_. I couldn't possibly cause him that much damage when I loved him so much, right?

Wrong.

Out of everyone, he was probably in the most danger. He was someone I wanted to do everything with, and someone I would do anything for. That was bad when it was coming from someone like me. Jake didn't deserve to be around a person who wrecked the lives of everyone he came into contact with. I couldn't let myself ruin his life too. I knew I would just end up hurting him. I already had once, and although we managed to pick up the pieces and have a stronger relationship because of it, I couldn't risk breaking him again.

But I knew that he loved me too. I overheard him talking to Jade about me in the Walmart where we had that shaving cream fight. He went on and on about the little things he liked about me that I would never be able to notice. It was just like when I thought about him. His eyes reflected the same adoration I felt for him, and I knew it would hurt him if I pulled away.

There was also the fact that I loved him more than I could express. I _needed_ him in my life. He was the only thing keeping me mostly sane for past few weeks, and I don't know what I'd have done without him. I couldn't imagine a life without him anymore. Every time I looked at him my heart stopped and I felt like nothing else in the world mattered. I wasn't sure _I_ could handle this.

But I had to. I had to keep Jake safe from me. Even if it meant never being with him again, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything went wrong. I was just a disaster waiting to happen, and he was a real, innocent, beautiful person with a heart of gold that deserved much better than to fall at the hands of someone he loved.

So I finally settled it. This was something that had to be done. I couldn't be trusted to keep Jake safe. He could end up emotionally broken forever because of something I did. He could even die like Dave did. I couldn't let that happen. I had to break his heart now- before I could break it even worse later.

"Dirk-"

"Stay away from me," I muttered. The words hurt to say, and I knew I was shaking trying to say them, but I repeatedly told myself this was the right thing to do.

"What? Dirk, come on, talk to me, you know you can," he insisted, scooting closer to me and putting his arm around me. I wanted to kiss him, just once more before this was all over, but I knew the longer I took to do it the more it would eat me up inside.

"Stay _away_ from me," I repeated, a bit more forcefully this time. I shrugged his arm off my shoulder and lifted my head up, holding back tears with every bit of effort in my body in an attempt to seem more sure about what I was saying.

"Dirk, seriously, what's the matter with you?!" He asked.

Suddenly he began reaching up to my face. I panicked when I realized what he was going to try to do. He was going to take off my shades. _No,_ I thought. He couldn't see my eyes. He didn't know yet that they were different, and even if I wanted him to, now would be the worst possible time for him to find out. Even worse, without my shades he would be able to see all the pain I was holding in. I couldn't show any sign of weakness, unless I wanted him to pull me out of my decision at the last second.

The moment his fingers touched my shades I acted in an instant. I slapped his hand away from my face, a little harder than I meant to, and turned away from him.

"I _SAID_ STAY _AWAY_ FROM ME!" Instantly I felt horribly guilty. That was my _left_ hand that I slapped him with. The hand where I got bitten. The one we had to _rebuild_. It must have hurt much more than my other hand would have. I couldn't see him, but he gasped and I could imagine the look of heartbreak and confusion on his face. I was about to apologize, but I caught myself before I could say anything. _I have to act like I don't care_ , I reminded myself. I stood up and started walking down the hallway to catch up with the others.

"Dirk, what's going on?!" He shouted, and I could hear the pain in his voice. I wanted it to stop. _I can't do this to him_ , I thought, but then I reminded myself that I was doing it for him. He had to get over me as soon as possible, and if acting like a complete jerk was the only way to make him do it, then that's what I needed to do.

I heard him get up, so I started walking down the hallway faster so he couldn't catch up and see the uncontrollable tears on my face. I didn't want anyone treating him like this; it was worse that I had to be the one to do it.

Suddenly he grabbed my shoulder and I froze. A chill ran down my spine. "Dirk, please tell me what's wrong," he said calmly.

I wanted to tell him, I really did. But I had to stop letting him build a bond between us. I knew exactly what could happen if I did. And I couldn't explain any of this; he wouldn't believe me. But I knew it was true, and he wasn't supposed to know me more than I did.

Suddenly he leaned forward and kissed me softly on the cheek. At that moment my heart completely broke down. I didn't want this to end, and I knew he didn't either. I wanted to kiss him back. I wanted to hold him and cry on his shoulder. I wanted him to help me. But I knew I couldn't let him. I was just being selfish by wanting to be with him.

I shoved him off me. "STOP IT!" I yelled, walking faster away from him. I didn't hear his footsteps following me, but that just made it worse by painting a picture in my mind of him standing there crying, wondering what he did.

All because of me.

 **A/N: Regret.**


	44. Chapter 44

**A/N: Really sorry about the last two chapters. Hey, I never said this wasn't going to be emotionally destroying. I also never said it was going to be good, but I went ahead and tried to fix it up a little. Also, I'm considering starting to upload a chapter a week instead of every other day to make it last longer. I probably won't, but if I start missing uploads, expect one every Saturday or Sunday.**

 **Roxy**

When I saw Dirk appear around the corner of the hallway, I smiled lightly and breathed a sigh of relief. I was worried he wasn't going to recover from Dave's death, but if he was here now that meant Jake must have found a way to calm him down.

Then I saw his face. He kept trying to avoid anyone seeing him, but I could tell his typical stoic expression was splintering. He was staring at the wall, and I couldn't help but wonder what he was thinking about. Whatever it was, it was definitely bothering him.

"Where's Jake?" I asked. I thought he would have been right by his side, chatting his ear off as he usually did when Dirk needed cheering up.

"He's coming," Dirk muttered without looking at me.

That's when I knew something was up. But a moment later I heard footsteps and ran around the corner to see Jake walking slowly down the hall towards me. I ran to catch up with him, but then I noticed that he was crying.

"Jakey, what happened?!" I asked.

He looked down at the floor.

"I… don't want to talk about it right now," he mumbled.

"What's wrong with Dirk?!"

"I don't know."

We caught up to everyone else and finally kept moving to the CEO's office. I kept glancing back at Dirk and Jake, but they were both staying on opposite sides of the group. Every once in a while, they would glance at one another and then look away quickly, but neither of them tried to say anything. Of course they were probably just upset about what just happened, but whenever someone died they usually ended up standing _closer_ together, not farther apart. _What could possibly have happened?_

Eventually we finally found the office with the plaque on the door that labeled it the room we were looking for. When we swung the door open, we gasped as we walked inside.

For one thing, the place looked absolutely nothing like an office. It looked like a scene out of some weird sci-fi movie. The walls and floor were silver metal, and the room was completely empty except for 13 glowing squares forming a circle on the floor. Each square had a god tier symbol on it.

"Now what are we supposed to do?" Kanaya asked.

We all shrugged. Feferi stepped forward and examined the squares.

"Maybe we just…"

She stepped onto the life square in front of her. Instantly it started glowing brighter, and a glowing line ran in a straight path before her to the middle of the circle.

That must have been what we were supposed to do. We each took a place on a square, lighting up a line that met the others in the middle of the circle. There was a corresponding spot for each person's god tier. I shuddered. That meant that all along, this place "knew" who was going to die in the end. How messed up was _that_?

After a couple moments of standing there, Karkat got impatient.

"Well now w-"

Suddenly a bright light lit up from the middle of the circle. It expanded and grew brighter and brighter, until all of us except Terezi were forced to squeeze our eyes shut to block out the light. Then everything was dark, and I couldn't hear anything.

Suddenly I heard a buzzing. I opened my eyes to find myself in somewhere completely different.

I was in a circular room with silver plated walls and a black metal floor. The first thing I noticed was a triangle of three empty person-sized glass boxes in the center of the room. I stepped forward and-

 _Ow._

Apparently I was in a glass box too. I looked around more to see that I was part of a huge circle of boxes surrounding the ones in the middle, and the others in this circle weren't empty.

Everyone else was in them too. There was a box for each person, and they were floating in suspended animation inside their boxes, all except for two.

Feferi was standing in front of her box, talking animatedly to Sollux, who did not seem as surprised as we were about all this.

 _Wait, but… Sollux is dead._

I gasped and looked around the circle some more. Suddenly I noticed a bunch of others that I hadn't seen before.

Rose.

Dave.

Jane.

"Oh my god!" I yelled, pushing on the wall of the box to open a door and running out of it. Feferi and Sollux finally noticed I was awake and came running over to greet me.

"What's going on?!" I asked them excitedly.

Suddenly I heard a voice.

"WHAT THE-"

"Karkat!" Feferi called, turning around and seeing that he had also just woken up from whatever kind of weird coma we had all been in. He opened the door and came out to meet us too, but then he looked past us and his jaw dropped when saw Dave floating peacefully in his box with a red light above his head.

"HOLY-"

"He's not dead," Sollux said quickly.

"Somebody better explain what is going on here!" Karkat half-shouted, still distracted by staring at Dave.

"It was a simulation," Sollux began, "I don't know how it happened, but somehow we've all been in a coma or something this whole time. There was no zombie apocalypse, everyone who died just sort of… went to sleep. I woke up after I died, but don't even bother asking how because I have no clue."

I didn't believe it at first, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. That explained why everything was so conveniently or inconveniently placed in all the houses we stopped at. That was why we could dream again. That was why nothing made any sense when we woke up there. Everything had felt real, but now it felt… different. I couldn't describe how it was different, but now that I was awake I was _completely sure_ that _this_ was what was real.

Karkat opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly we saw Kanaya open her eyes and take in a gasp of breath. Everyone else was starting to wake up one by one now, but everyone who died in the simulation stayed asleep.

Once Dirk and Jake woke up and had their respective freak-outs over the fact that everyone was still alive, I ran over to them and hugged them both as hard as I possibly could.

"We did it guys!" I squealed.

But Jake didn't respond, and Dirk just muttered a "Yeah." The second I let go of them they just awkwardly stepped away from each other, staring at the floor with these blank expressions that told me something was _definitely_ wrong.

I waved my hand in front of their faces. "What's going on?" I asked. I didn't get a response. Instead they drifted silently over to the group watching everyone who was still now waking up. Finally, I turned back towards them too.

Still no news on everyone that died. We watched them carefully, but there was no movement inside the boxes except for the rise and fall of their chests as they breathed. _At least they're breathing_ , I thought.

We tried various methods of getting them out, from things that really should have worked to things that were just plain stupid. Sollux found a screwdriver and tried to pry the doors open. Karkat screamed really loud and threw a chair. Dirk tried hacking into the computers near the wall. Nothing worked. I was starting to think there was no way to bring them back.

Suddenly when we were just about to give up, we hear an unfamiliar voice. I looked around for the source of it, but there was nobody there. It must have been coming from a speaker.

"Simulation program terminated," it said in a monotonous robotic voice. We all went silent and listened carefully.

"Player revival initiating."

Somebody gasped. It said player _revival_. We were going to get them back!

Suddenly the three glass boxes in the center of the room lit up.

"Each session will pick one player to represent them".

I figured each session meant the betas, the alphas, and the trolls. Which meant we had to pick someone from Dirk, Jake, and I. _Good luck getting them to stop moping around long enough to choose_ , I thought to myself.

"Each chosen player will re-enter the simulation and have 48 hours to inject a provided serum into two of the deceased players. If a player is infected, the infection will spread much more rapidly than in the first simulation".

 _Wait, we have to bring them back ourselves?_

"None of the other players will be allowed to leave this room until the 48 hours are over. None of the chosen players will be allowed to leave the simulation until the 48 hours are over. Once the 48 hours are over, the simulation will end. If all players have been rescued by that time, they will all wake up and the door to exit this room will open. If not all of the players are rescued, the door will open, but the world inside the simulation will be destructed along with all the players inside of it".

 _So if we don't save everyone, we die?!_

Suddenly the doors to the glass boxes in the center swung open.

"Players may now choose their representatives".

We all scattered and hurriedly tried to pick who would be the most willing to go and the mostly likely to survive. I ran over to Dirk and Jake, who were still standing awkwardly apart and trying to stare anywhere except from at each other. I sighed.

 _Well let's think about this logically. There's only three of us. We all know Dirk is in no position mentally to go back in there, so that leaves just me and Jake._

' _Jake and I_ ' a voice in the back of my head reminded me.

 _Shut up, that's just Jane's grammar lessons talking._

I walked over to Jake. "So which one of us-"

Before I could finish, Dirk ran forward and pushed past us.

"Where are you-"

I watched wide-eyed as he jumped into the box for our session and slammed the door shut.

"Dirk!" Jake shouted, finally looking up at him but with tears in his eyes. Dirk said nothing and turned around, before a bright light flashed inside the box and we couldn't see him anymore. When the light faded down to how it was before, Dirk was unconscious again, floating in the box just like he was before we all woke up.

I was shocked.

 _Well_ that _just happened._


	45. Chapter 45

**A/N: Once again, I apologize. Also I'm changing the upload schedule to have two days in between, so next upload on Friday!**

 **Dirk**

 _Well_ that _just happened._

I was staring up at the all-too-familiar ceiling of the very same room I woke up in at the start of this mess. It felt like I was getting a fresh start, but when I rolled over to my left and saw Jake's empty bed, I knew that this time I was all alone.

 _John and Karkat are probably here_ , I thought, but if I was waking up here then that meant they must be in the places they first woke up, and that would be a long way away from this place. However I was supposed to find the people I had to bring back, it would be all by myself. And that was not going to be easy.

Suddenly a thought hit me.

 _WHY DID I DO THAT?!_

I was quickly realizing just how hard it was going to be to do this. I had to find two zombies and somehow cure them without getting killed, all in two days. It took me _days_ to travel across the city the first time. This was going to be impossible!

Besides, I was in no shape to be back here. This whole situation had messed me up _really_ bad, and I knew it. Just thinking about having to face Dave or Jane dead was enough to bring back all the stress I thought I had left behind.

Although I hadn't really left it behind in the first place, had I? I let my actions in the simulation come over to haunt me in the real world, and they were ruining my life all the same. I pushed Jake away to keep him safe from the kinds of things I had done _in the simulation_. None of it was going to just go away. My mistakes were always going to be there. They were just more splinters I couldn't pick up.

But now I was back here. I couldn't have let anybody else do this, I had to do it myself.

But _why_? I was probably just going to mess this up and get us all trapped in here. I had just wanted a shot to redeem myself. At least I _thought_ that's why I did it. Maybe I just wanted to get away from Jake. Or I wanted a break from the fact that the whole simulation thing was just another layer of confusion added to my problem of not being able to separate what was real from what wasn't. Either way I had just royally screwed us all over. I couldn't do this. I was going to be the one to finally get us all killed.

I sighed. _Well if I'm going to fail, I might as well try as hard as possible not to_ , I figured. I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked out the window, which was wide open this time.

Everything felt hazy, like when I was awake on Derse and Earth at the same time before Sburb started. It was probably because this time I knew it wasn't real. But it felt weird either way, and I wanted it to stop. But I knew it wasn't going to stop unless I woke up, which I couldn't. I decided to just shrug off the feeling. Even though it gave me a headache, I thought I would just get used to it in time.

I glanced at the bedside table next to me. The alarm clock I set the first day was still shattered in pieces on the floor, and I would have laughed at the memory if I wasn't under so much stress at the time. Instead I set my attention on a watch that was sitting on the table.

It wasn't a normal watch. It had a large digital screen on it that took up most of my wrist, and two glass tubes attached to the sides with a pink liquid in them that looked just like the cure Roxy had made. I put on the watch and pressed one of the buttons on the bottom of the screen. A needle came out of one of the glass tubes and it became unclasped from the watch. I took it out and held it up to my eyes so I could see it better. Turning it around in my hand, I guessed that these were the serums I had to inject into two of the dead players.

I clicked the serum back into the watch and pressed the button again to make the needle retract and secure it in place. I pressed the other screen lit up and showed a digital map just like the ones we had the last time we were here. The only difference was that this map was tracking the locations of not only me, but everyone else. I gulped when I saw Jane and Dave's markers moving slowly down the streets where they were located. I wasn't sure why, but I hadn't fully realized I would have to bring them back from being _zombies_ until just now. I didn't know if I would be able to handle seeing that. But I would have to.

Next to the map was each person's name. Karkat's, John's, and mine were listed in green, but the others were red. I guessed that their names would change color when someone came back to life. _Or when they died_ , I thought, but I quickly pushed the idea out of my mind in an attempt to not become even more stressed than I already was about all this.

 _Well I might as well get going_ , I decided. I looked at the map again. Jane was the closest, I would have to get to her first.

I sighed. It was going to be a long two days.


	46. Chapter 46

**Jake**

 _Well_ that _just happened._

I stood there wide-eyed, gaping at the scene before me. John and Karkat were running towards their respective entryways back into the simulation, but everyone else was staring at Dirk, who was now completely unconscious just as before. Now he was in danger again, and I couldn't do anything to save him.

What was he _thinking_?! There was no way he would be able to survive going back in there without going completely mad. _I_ was ready and willing to face the apocalypse again if it meant I could save Jane and the others, and I knew I would be able to do it. There was no reason for _him_ to go in, was there?

Yes there was.

 _He probably wanted to get away from me_ , I thought. He had been acting even stranger than usual since Dave died, and he very clearly wanted nothing to do with me. I didn't know what I had done that would have made him so angry with me, but it made me feel awful just thinking about it. The last thing he needed right now was another reason to be alone, but from the looks of it I had given him a perfect one.

Now he was going to go back into that disaster because of me. He was going to risk having another emotional meltdown and possibly die just to get away from me. And I wouldn't be there to try helping him out of it, not that I thought he would let me even if I was. Whatever I did must have been really bad, and I wanted to make it up to him so bad, but now I was going to have to wait two days to pick up the pieces.

 _Could_ I pick up the pieces?

"Jake, you _have_ to tell me what's wrong with Dirk," Roxy said, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"I- I don't know," I said without taking my eyes off him.

"Please, Jakey, I need you to tell me what happened. I have to know why he ran in there without telling us! I know you might not want to talk about it but I'm _begging_ you!"

"Really Roxy, I'm just as clueless as you," I admitted.

"Can you at least tell me what went on when you were talking to him after Dave died?" She asked.

I really didn't want to tell her. It wasn't the kind of thing most people wanted to share, and I didn't think it would be fair to him to share it anyway. The only reason I was even considering it was because talking to her about it might help us make sense of why he was acting so strange. I sighed.

"He… I tried to comfort him, but he wouldn't look at me. Then… he- he told me…"

I was having trouble finishing. The words brought back the memory so vividly and I didn't want to think about it anymore than I already was.

Roxy must have noticed. "On second thought, you don't have to tell me if you really don't want to," she said quickly. But I had to tell her. She looked so disappointed, and I didn't want to hold back information that might help us understand what was wrong with Dirk.

"He told me to stay away from him," I choked.

"What?"

"He said it three times and he just wouldn't listen to me at all, he… He didn't even want to look at me," I said. Now I was really crying and I didn't even care anymore.

"Did you do something to make him mad?" She asked.

"I- I don't think so!"

She gave me a hug. Normally I would have just stood there awkwardly not knowing what was going on, but this time I hugged her back just because I really needed to.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," she said when she let go of me.

"Why wouldn't I?! He broke up with me, and I don't even know why!"

"He's probably just upset! Dave just died, he tends to act really stupid when he's sad… actually he tends to act really stupid _all_ the time. You of all people should know that, you're always the one having to make him feel better! I'm sure he'll realize that he's being an idiot once he gets over the shock," she insisted.

"But even if he wasn't thinking straight, the idea of wanting me gone had to have come from _somewhere_! It was my fault; I just know it."

"Just wait until they all get out," she pleaded, "Then everyone will be alive again and he'll stop being so depressed. I'm sure that if you did something it was practically nothing, especially if you can't even figure out what it was."

She was making sense. But for some reason I couldn't completely believe her. Something about Dirk's behavior had been more off than when he was usually upset. Something _really_ bad must have happened, and from the way he yelled at me I thought it _had_ to be my fault.

No matter what happened, there was nothing I could do now but wait. He wouldn't wake up for another 48 hours, and I couldn't do anything about this until then.

I looked at Dirk, who was just floating there in the box with a blank expression. There was no way for me to tell what was going on with him inside the simulation. I sighed. Even though something had happened between us, I just hoped he was okay.


	47. Chapter 47

**Dirk**

 _Well, there she is._

I had been staring down at the street from over the edge of the fire escape for what felt like three hours now. Below me there were only about ten zombies, just like there were on pretty much every other street so far. I guess that was why we were given such little time to save everyone: the trips were much shorter with less obstacles in the way.

But even with most of the zombies being mysteriously gone, it was still taking me awhile to bring Jane back to life. I was here now, I was in the right place, but I couldn't bring myself to go down there.

Jane was _dead_. She was a _zombie_. Now I had to go face-to-face with her to bring her back? From up here I could only identify her by her hair and t-shirt, but even without seeing her face I could tell she wasn't okay. She moved with the same undead stagger as all the others, and she would have blended right in if I hadn't known her before she died.

Just seeing her from up here gave me chills. There was no way I would be able to go down there and see what she actually looked like.

The thought of doing it made me think of my dreams. I couldn't see her dead, it would be _just like_ them. I couldn't face my nightmares in real life. Not again.

I gulped. I had to do this. If I didn't, I wouldn't make it out alive. None of us would. Then that would just be more deaths that were my fault. Besides, it wasn't like I had to _kill_ her. I just had to give her the cure.

I popped out the serum from the watch and slid it into my pocket as I crossed the fire escape back over to the ladder. I took a deep breath. It was now or never. I just had to do this, get it over with, and move on to finding someone else. It wouldn't be _too_ hard, right?

But once I got down to the bottom of the ladder, I started having second thoughts. My heart was beating a mile a minute and I could see Jane on the other side. She was covered in bloody gashes and she looked sickly and more pale than usual. Even from far away I could see that her eyes were glassed over, a sight that only made my breathing heavier and my head turn away.

My mind was begging me to turn around, but I couldn't.

 _Come on Dirk, don't be a wimp. This is easy. There's barely any of them there, and you don't even have to kill her. Just inject her with the cure and everything will be okay._

Suddenly I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. I unfroze and spun around to see a zombie right behind me about to tear into my skin. I cursed loudly and jumped back just in time to grab my katana from behind my back and take care of it. I _had_ to get moving. Although there weren't a lot of them, the ones that were there were as dangerous as ever.

I swallowed nervously and tightened my grip on the katana. Once I started running, I couldn't stop. It was _way_ too late to quit now.

The closer I got to Jane, the better I could see her. I had to force my eyes to stay open despite how much it hurt. Her blank expression mimicked the lifeless stares of all the other zombies, a look I never thought I'd see on her.

She reached towards me. I couldn't do this anymore. This was my _friend_. I couldn't bear to see her like this any longer. I turned my head and squeezed my eyes shut.

 _Oh my god, what are you doing?! You're gonna die!_

I didn't listen to myself. I physically _could not_ look. Instead I slid my hand into my pocket and pulled out the tube of the serum, just as I felt Jane's cold undead hand grab me.

 _Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god._

I cursed again and pushed her against a wall, only taking a quick painful glance once every couple seconds. The syringe nearly slipped out of my hand as I held it up and looked again to see where was a good spot to inject it. Once I had a good guess of what I was doing, I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed the needle into her arm.

Suddenly she let go of me. Everything went silent and I couldn't hear anything except my own heavy breathing. I couldn't move.

 _Is it over?_

"Dirk?"

My eyes snapped open and I gasped. It was Jane. She was alive. She was still covered in cuts and blood and she looked really weak, but she was alive.

"Dirk? W-what happened?" she mumbled.

I didn't have time to explain. There were still zombies stumbling towards us. We had to get inside.

I grabbed her arm. "Let's go."

"Wha-"

She didn't have time to finish saying whatever she was going to say before I had dragged her to her feet and pulled her down the street into the nearest apartment building.

"For crying out loud! Dirk Strider, will you _please_ tell me what's going on?!" she shouted.

I took a minute to catch my breath before answering her. _Oh my god that just happened._ I was relieved to have gotten it over with and saved her, but I was still shaking from the experience.

"Well for starters, you died." I said bluntly. "You basically got mauled to death by zombies and we were all pretty ticked off for a while. But eventually we ended the simulation and everything, although Dave died along the way and Jade got infected but we were able to save her. It turns out this whole thing is just a simulation, and we all woke up in this room where we've all been in a coma the whole time. Everyone who died in the simulation didn't wake up, so we had to send three people back in to give you guys a cure. We got 48 hours for each of us to save two people, and if we can't do it in time we all die. Got it?"

Saying everything quickly and without any explanation made it much easier to not burst into tears, even if it was ripping me apart on the inside and Jane had a look on her face that clearly meant she didn't understand a word I was saying.

 _Great idea Dirk, just pretend you aren't that upset about Dave and that nothing happened between you and Jake. I'm sure that'll do wonders for your sanity!_

Since finally ditching Hal, my subconscious was starting to develop an annoying hatred towards me to make up for his sarcastic comments. Either I just wasn't used to not having my own thoughts critiquing my every move or it was totally normal for a person to end up talking to themselves in one way or another eventually. Although there was still the possibility I was going insane, even though the whole hallucination problem was starting to clear itself up now that I knew this was all a simulation. Maybe that MP3 player had been some kind of glitch that made me see different events on the timeline. That resolution calmed me down a little, but it still couldn't explain all my nervous breakdowns. I probably needed someone like Rose to tell me what was wrong with me. Too bad she was dead.

"I- what?" Jane mumbled.

I was _not_ going to explain all that again. If I tried to say Dave's name again I would definitely end up crying. Luckily she was finally seeming to come around.

"So… you just brought me back to life?" she asked.

"Basically."

She took a deep breath. "Ok… just give me a minute."

I stood there in awkward silence waiting for her to say something. I could practically see the gears turning in her head as she tried to wrap her mind around what I had told her. Just when I was about to retreat back into existential crisis city (population: me), she looked like a lightbulb went off above her head. She suddenly grabbed me and pulled me into a hug.

"You saved me!" she said.

I was stunned. "I… I guess," I mumbled, but I wasn't sure if I actually believed it. Technically, I _was_ the one that tracked her down and injected her with the cure for the virus. But anyone could have done that. If I hadn't been an idiot and jumped back into the simulation, someone else would have, and _they_ would bring her back. They probably would have done it faster, too. They wouldn't have gotten held up by freaking out over the fact that she was a zombie. I didn't actually _save_ her, I just did something everyone else could and would have done if they were in my place. That didn't count. Right?

"Thank you thank you thank y-"

"That's enough of that," I said quickly, pushing her off me. I still felt guilty for having been the one to come back. She didn't know what a horrible person I was. She didn't know how fast I had given up on Eridan. She didn't know how much I had pushed everyone away after Dave was bitten. She didn't know that I had seen Dave's death coming and didn't tell anyone. Of course she was thanking me. She just didn't know any better.

"Sorry, I just- I'm so glad you brought me back! And that you made it out alive in the first place!" she beamed.

 _Please stop._ She was going to keep thanking me, wasn't she? That was exactly what I _didn't_ need right now. The last thing I wanted was someone praising me like I was some kind of hero.

"Don't get too excited just yet," I said, "we still have a lot of people to save."

She stopped beaming and was starting to look more serious. "Well, can I help at least?" she asked.

To be honest I was relieved that she wanted to be part of this. Maybe she could be the one to save whoever we were going after next. That way I wouldn't mess it up.

"Sure."

But once we started planning out where we were going next, I quickly realized it wouldn't be that easy. Even though Jane was here, she was expecting _me_ to take the lead.


	48. Chapter 48

**Karkat**

"Well it's official: I'm bored," Eridan said, walking into the living room where I had been talking to Gamzee for the past ten minutes. I wasn't really sure where he had been, but I didn't really mind much because I didn't think anyone would bother leaving the house. Besides, I had something much more important to worry about. After we saved Eridan, Gamzee stole the watch with the map on it.

It had been a long time since I was able to check that map, and I had no idea how much time was left, but I didn't think it was a lot. I _needed_ to get it back. I had to know if Dave was ok. When he died, it felt like everything that was left of my world had just shattered. I didn't know how I was going to survive, but then suddenly I found out he was still alive and it actually seemed like everything was going to be okay. I knew I had to come back here so I could save him. I hadn't considered the fact that if I didn't save Gamzee and Eridan, nobody else would. It wasn't until Gamzee and I saw Eridan's zombie roaming the street on our way to Dave that it occurred to me. It hurt to have to put his life in the hands of someone else, but I had to. If whoever that person was failed to get him out of here alive, I was going to lose it.

"I swear to god Gamzee, if you don't give that back right now I'm going to push you down a flight of stairs!" I yelled.

He lifted up his legs and draped them sideways across the armchair he was sitting in, so that he was now lying across it with his head dangling off the other side. "Nah bro, you just need to chill instead of whipping that thing out every two seconds," he said.

"I _need_ it! At least tell me where you hid it!"

"It's on the top shelf," he smiled mischievously.

"YOU LITTLE-"

"I _said_ I'm bored," Eridan interrupted from the doorway to the kitchen, "fix it."

"Remind me why I decided to save you again?" I asked him. He had done nothing but complain all day, and he never even thanked me.

"Because you know nobody else would," he muttered.

"Well I'm starting to regret it," I said under my breath, although there's a pretty good chance that he heard me.

Before he could say anything else, Gamzee sat up in his chair. "Calm down bros, if you're bored why don't we play a game or something-"

"THAT'S STUPID!"

"I found this," Eridan said, and all of a sudden he held up the watch that I had been looking for all day.

"Give me that!" I shouted, jumping off the couch and running over to snatch it out of his hands.

"Aw, come on Kar-bro-"

I didn't listen to him. It didn't matter how much Gamzee thought I needed to stop stressing out. I had to know the time. He was just being an idiot; if there was anything I needed to be stressing out over, it was _definitely_ this.

"You know for once I think the juggalo might be right," Eridan said, but I barely heard him. I was too busy staring silently at the screen on the watch in front of me.

"Karkat?"

"You okay bro?"

I couldn't believe it.

We had _fifteen minutes_ left.

Rose and Aradia had been rescued by John, and the other Strider was with the Crocker girl.

But Dave was still dead.

 **A/N: Sorry this chapter was late! Also, there's only two more chapters left and I'm getting very sentimental.**


	49. Chapter 49

**A/N:** ** _Prepare yourselves._**

 **Dirk**

"Ok, we can do this," I told Jane, "We only have fifteen minutes left, but we're already here. It won't take that long to grab Dave and give him the cure. We'll be in and out of there in no time."

"I know Dirk. I have complete faith that we're going to save him, you _don't_ have to keep trying to convince me," she said.

"I'm not trying to convince _you_ ; I'm trying to convince myself."

She sighed. "Okay listen, maybe you shouldn't be the one to do this."

"What? _I'm_ the one who came back in here with the cure, it's _my_ job to get two people to safety," I said.

"I know, but this is your brother! I don't want you to see him dead and have another existential crisis or something, especially when we only have fifteen minutes left."

"No, I'm _going_ to do this, I'll be fine," I insisted.

"Dirk _please_. I can see it already, you'll be going up to give him the cure and then you'll freeze up right in front of him. You might even get bitten! I really don't think this is the kind of thing we can risk right now!"

"Stop trying to talk me out of this. I know what I'm doing."

"You said the reactions for a zombie bite are a lot faster than they were before! If anything happens we could miss getting out by _seconds_!"

"Nothing's going to happen!"

"Please! At least let me go to hold him down or something in case you can't do it!"

"No, I don't need any help!"

"Even if you could do it without me, it'll be easier this way! With this little time, you can't deny we need every advantage we can get!"

" _Fine_! If you insist on believing that I'm _that_ incompetent then be my guest to do whatever the hell you want to make up for my stupidity" I shouted, gesturing towards the ladder leading from the roof down to the street.

She made an irritated noise and started climbing down. "Don't you dare come down until I've got him under control!" she warned me.

"Whatever," I muttered, watching her get to the bottom. I was pretty mad at her at the moment, but I was still worried about her. What if she tripped or something and she ended up getting bitten again? It was hard to see someone go out into a dangerous situation like that without being able to help, but I couldn't look away or I would miss my cue to come down.

She was inching towards Dave with her hand hovering readily over the gun on her hip. _Yeah she's got this_ , I thought, and for a reason I couldn't explain I felt a slight twinge of jealousy.

Suddenly when she was halfway to him, I saw her stop. I couldn't see her face, but I could tell something was wrong. "Jane?!" I called down to her, but she didn't move. What was going on?

"Jane!"

Now Dave was stumbling towards her. _Oh no_. Was she freaking out from seeing her dead? _Of course she is, you idiot. If you saw someone you recognized as a zombie, you would freak out too. This is exactly like what happened when you went to save her._ I don't know why she thought it would be better for her to go first.

 _Move, Jane!_

She was still frozen, but now I could tell even from up here that she was shaking. I was starting to freak out too. Dave was getting closer and closer, and she wasn't even trying to do anything. She was going to get bitten.

I couldn't let her do this anymore. I ran over to the ladder and climbed down it as fast as I could, jumping off before the last couple rungs and just barely sticking the landing at the bottom. I ran towards Jane, trying as hard as I could not to look at Dave, but I couldn't stop myself from getting just a glance of him.

I gasped. He was unmistakably dead. His skin was a pale green color that no living thing could ever be, and his shades were gone revealing colorless empty eyes. Blood was dripping off his body, leaving a dark red trail behind him.

This was _my_ fault. _I_ did this to him.

 _No, stop it_ , I told myself. I had to keep going, or everything was only going to get a lot worse.

Well as it turned out, everything got a lot worse anyway.

I kept my eyes focused on Jane to avoid looking at Dave, telling myself he wasn't there even though I knew that was a lie. Then I saw him grab her. _I'm not going to make it_ , I thought, but I kept running towards her anyway.

I let out a quick sigh of relief as I pushed her away just before he could bite her. But Dave's zombie still got what it wanted.

I screamed in agony as a stabbing pain suddenly shot through my left shoulder. _Oh my god._ I got bitten. _Again_.

The pain was _much_ worse than the last time I got bitten. I wasn't sure if it was because it was closer to my head this time or because the virus in this version of the simulation was supposed to spread quicker; all I knew was it hurt worse than anything I had ever felt in my life, and it wasn't subsiding. _Wait. The virus spreads quicker_. I suddenly remembered how little time I probably had. I might be dead in less than fifteen minutes.

The pain still wasn't dying down. I pulled away and fell to the ground, unable to take it. My heart was pounding and I was slowly starting to realize just how bad the situation was. If I died, _none_ of us would make it out alive. I had just screwed us all over at the last second, just like I knew I would. How the hell could I have managed to that that?! How was there _seriously_ more ways for me to mess up?!

"Dirk!" I heard Jane scream. Footsteps were rushing towards me and I felt her grab my arm. I was glad to know she was finally able to move, but I couldn't see her because my eyes were squeezed shut from the pain. My fingers fumbled to the watch on my wrist and I grabbed the serum, finally opening my eyes and holding it out to her.

She looked scared and sort of guilty, but I made her take it. She had to save Dave since I couldn't. After a moment of silence where she just stared at me in disbelief and I lay there panting and grasping my shoulder in an extremely failed attempt to stop the bleeding, she finally grabbed the cure from me with an expression of pure determination and went back over to Dave.

I closed my eyes again and tried to slow my breathing while she saved him, but it wasn't really working. The pain was only getting worse, and I had to bite my lip to keep myself from screaming again. _Please hurry up, Jane_. I couldn't tell what was going on but from the lack of distressed noises I guessed that she was doing well. I tried to focus on the relief from that instead of my agony, but that wasn't working either. It was hard to ignore something that felt like getting bit by a metal shark that wouldn't let go.

I opened my eyes and the sky was spinning in front of me. My hearing was quickly fading to a low buzz, and I had completely lost all feeling in that arm except for the pain of the bite. I closed my eyes again and was probably right about to pass out when I suddenly felt a hand grab my other arm.

It wasn't Jane's hand. My eyes snapped open to see Dave hovering over me, thankfully alive, but visibly terrified and extremely confused. He leaned back quickly the moment I saw him and I tried to sit up, bracing myself with one arm after finally letting go of the other.

"What the hell just happened?!" Dave asked with audible panic.

I looked over at Jane. She looked like she didn't know what to say, and I couldn't blame her. We couldn't tell him that it was _his_ zombie that did this to me; he would feel horrible for something that wasn't his fault!

"Uh…"

"I got bitten just before we could reach you," I said quickly, "Jane had to finish the job."

He seemed to accept the lie, but obviously still had no idea what was going on.

"What job?! How are you here?! How am _I_ here?!"

"I'll explain on the way," Jane said, grabbing my arm to help me up, "If we don't get out of here fast, we'll get bitten too!"

When I got to my feet I was unimaginably dizzy and could barely walk, but we all ran as fast as we could into the nearest house. Jane told Dave everything that happened, while I just focused on trying not to die.

Once we got inside I collapsed on a couch that was conveniently placed right next to the door.

"I'll go see what kind of medical supplies we have!" Jane said, and ran out of the room to go find a bathroom or something.

Dave was still standing in shock in the middle of the room. My vision was really blurry, but I could just barely see him turn around and walk over to me.

"So… everyone's still alive?" he asked. He didn't seem to want to look at me. Not that I could blame him; this was all my fault and he probably knew it.

"Yeah. You'll get to see them in like…" I hesitantly raised my arm up to check the watch, "Seven minutes. Unless I die before then, that is."

"What?"

"If we don't have everyone alive by the time the simulation ends, everyone who's inside it now will die. You were the last one we had to save, but the time for the virus to spread is a lot faster this time around, so I might not make it."

"Wh- well, what do we do then?!"

"Nothing, I guess," I said with tears starting to burn in the back of my throat, "We can try to slow it down, but I don't think it's gonna work."

"So we're doomed?"

"Quite possibly."

I was trying to keep myself calm to slow down my death, but it wasn't really helping. I knew the chance of my making it was slim, and I think Dave was starting to realize it too. We tried so hard to save everyone, but we missed the chance. I pictured everyone else in the simulation room, anxiously watching the lights above all our heads to see if we were going to make it. They were probably so disappointed when they saw mine go green. I had let everybody down. Again.

And what about Jake? He was probably crying, finding out that I couldn't do this after all, and now I was going to die because of it. Unless he didn't care. Maybe he had already moved on like I wanted him to. Maybe he decided I was just a stubborn jerk who dumped him for no reason. He probably had. The strange thing was I wasn't sure whether to be glad that he managed to escape having me in his life or to feel awful about what he thought of me. I was already completely certain that I regretted what I did. I was starting to actually understand why I did it, too. I was so upset about Dave that I shut down. I couldn't take the pain. I wanted to stop feeling and not have to think about anything. It was so much easier to just give up on dealing with my problems than it was to actually face how much it hurt. Then Jake came along and made himself impossible to ignore, so I _had_ to think about him, and then all my feelings came rushing back in an avalanche of pain that I couldn't make sense of, and before I knew it I had ruined everything.

I just hadn't been able to think clearly until now. _Now_ I was realizing just how much I screwed up. Dave _died_ , and I couldn't even manage to bear the pain for more than a couple minutes before I completely broke down, and then I let my anger hurt Jake too in the worst way possible. I hurt both of them. I was a horrible person.

It didn't matter now though, did it? In a couple minutes I would be dead. I would never be able to make it up to Dave for what I did. I would never find out if Jake was over me or not. I would just be the kid who died at the last second and took everyone else along with him.

"So, what, we'll just… cease to exist?"

"I don't know," I muttered.

Suddenly my vision cleared up a little bit, and for just a moment before he turned away and everything went blurry again, I noticed something about Dave.

His eyes were red.

He had red eyes? Was that why he wore his shades all the time? Suddenly I was starting to feel very different about myself. I thought I was a horrible person that ruined pretty much everything, and my eyes were just a disgusting mutation that reflected that. Every time I looked in the mirror I was reminded of just how different I was from everyone else, and even though I knew my eyes were one little thing that barely even mattered, they made me remember everything else about myself that I wasn't exactly proud of. If someone could _see_ that I was different, they might consider the fact that I was some sort of _thing_ that they weren't, and having that mindset for even half a second could be just enough time for them to unravel everything else that was wrong with me that they somehow seemed completely oblivious to. Then they would realize that I _was_ something they weren't. Then they would realize that they were right.

But now I was finding out that I wasn't alone. Dave's eyes were different too, and he hid them behind his shades just like I did. But nothing was wrong with him. He never victimized anyone; if anything _he_ was a victim. But he still felt the need to keep his eyes a secret. I wasn't sure why, but somehow the thought made me feel better about myself. It made me feel more… human.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

"Sorry for what?" he asked, turning back towards me. He seemed perfectly fine with me seeing his eyes, even though he was constantly trying to avoid Jane seeing him. Maybe he was used to his brother knowing, so he felt okay having me know.

 _Dirk, what are you doing?_ I wasn't sure why I was about to tell Dave what happened. I guess I just wanted to tell _someone_ before I died.

"Before we got to the hotel, I… The simulation glitched and I had some kind of vision of you dying. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't do anything about it."

He looked angry, sad, confused, and surprised all at once, and I couldn't really tell how he was reacting. The fact that everything was blurry wasn't doing much to help.

"That doesn't make it your fault," he finally said.

 _What?! Is he an idiot?!_

"Of course it makes it my fault," I said, "If I had told someone what I saw, we could have done something to prevent you from dying. _I'm_ the one who messed this up, just like I messed up everything else! Do you just not see that?"

"I can't blame you for not telling us that! We probably wouldn't have believed you anyway! If this was the other way around I probably wouldn't have told anyone either, okay? It doesn't even matter anymore now that it's been undone, but even if it did, that was just _one_ mistake you made! There's no way anything else was your fault."

"Yes there is. Eridan-"

" _Eridan_ was even more stubborn than you're being! There's no way he would have come with you no matter how hard you tried!"

"Well Jake-"

"If that was actually your fault, do you really think he would have been so happy to see you when he showed up at the hotel?!"

"I-"

"No! Stop it! _None of this_ was ever your fault! You're just looking to blame yourself for anything you can think of! You're just as innocent as the rest of us, you just aren't seeing that! If _I_ did anything to hurt any of you, I wouldn't blame myself if it wasn't _my fault_!"

Suddenly I realized he _had_ done something. It was _his_ zombie that bit me. We might not get out of here because of that, but I wasn't blaming him. He wasn't conscious when it happened; It definitely wasn't his fault. But _would_ he have blamed himself if he knew?

I was starting to think that he would have, even though he had no reason to. Was it the same as how I thought everything was _my_ fault? Maybe it really wasn't. Maybe I _was_ just stuck trying to seeing the worst in myself, even when there was nothing there. After all, they say your worst critic is yourself. Was that all there was to it? Did everyone else _really_ think I was a good person, and I just couldn't see it because I was constantly doubting myself?

Before I could say anything else, Jane suddenly burst into the room, carrying a bunch of medical supplies and dropping them onto the floor. I sat up a little bit and she scanned the pile quickly, grabbing some bandages and bottles of something I couldn't make out.

"I don't know if this is going to work, but there's a chance it might slow down the infection and it's the best option we have!" she said.

"Give me that," Dave said, grabbing my wrist and taking off the watch. "Five minutes," he reported.

Both of them were in a frazzled panic now, grabbing things from off the floor and putting them on the stinging bite in my shoulder. They were talking to each other in a hurry but I couldn't make out what they were saying anymore, so I just sat there trying to act like I was fine and gritting my teeth through the pain. Every once in awhile Dave would check the watch and hold up his hand with the number of minutes we had left.

Four.

Three.

Two.

I couldn't help but wonder why everyone seemed to care so much. Of course, getting me out of this alive was the deciding factor in whether or not _they_ would survive, but that was just in this situation. Even before all this, they _cared_ about me. Jane didn't freak out about me cutting off part of my arm just because she didn't want want to see it, she was genuinely worried about me. Roxy didn't come to me in tears after Jane died just because she didn't know who else to go to, she actually considered me a friend that she thought would make her feel better.

 _Oh my god._ I had been a complete idiot this entire time. This _wasn't_ my fault. I thought everyone should be hating me, but maybe there was a reason why they weren't. I _didn't_ actually do all those things I blamed myself for. Dave was right, and so was Jake.

 _Holy crap. Jake._ I suddenly realized that the biggest mistake I made wasn't ignoring what I knew was going to happen to Dave, it was what I did to Jake. I was so obsessed with hating myself that I had pushed him away without giving him a reason. He probably felt horrible! I had given him the impression that _he_ had done something wrong, when _I_ was the one being a jerk. Did I really think it would be better for him to be heartbroken? What was I _thinking_?!

One minute.

I was going to die. Of course, just when I finally changed my horrible outlook on life it was too late. I was never going to get to apologize to Jake. He was going to live the rest of his life thinking that he did something wrong. I couldn't let him think that, or he would end up just like me. But there was nothing I could do about that now.

Suddenly I felt something in my throat. It was a choking feeling, slowly working its way up until before I knew it I couldn't breathe. This was it. I started coughing, and the feeling was only getting worse.

Dave cursed, and Jane gasped loudly and grabbed my other arm.

"You're going to make it!" she said, and I could hear it in her voice that she was about to cry.

"We still have thirty seconds!" Dave said.

"Please Dirk, hold on, you have to make it!"

I tried as hard as I could to catch my breath, but it wasn't working. I just kept coughing, and all of a sudden I was tasting blood. This only made me panic even more, and it was becoming harder and harder for me to breathe. This was it. This was the end of my life. I was dying.

"15 seconds!"

I wanted this to stop. I didn't think I was going to make it, but whatever happened I wanted it to happen soon. The pain was too much for me to handle, and I had never been more scared in my life. I wasn't ready to die.

"Don't give up!" Jane shouted, and I could tell they were being tortured by the fact that they couldn't do anything but stand and watch.

"Almost there!" Dave said.

 _Please don't die. Please don't die._ I had to see Jake again. I had to apologize. I had to make sure everyone else made it out of here alive. I couldn't let anyone down.

"Dirk!"

 **A/N: So. Hey. Yeah. I almost cried both writing and editing this. There's only one more chapter. I'm gonna miss you guys screaming at me. Well I know that was horrible, so I'm about to make it a ton worse. Ready? Ok, to keep the dramatic suspense and put off the end, I'm not uploading the last chapter until my birthday. Which is September 28** **th** **. See ya then! Also, sorry.**


	50. Chapter 50

**Dirk**

Everything was dark.

I couldn't even tell what "everything" was. I wasn't feeling anything. It was like I was surrounded by… nothing. All my pain was gone, but it seemed like _I_ was gone too.

Slowly reality came trickling back into my mind and I became aware that I could move. I could hear muffled voices. I could feel cold air venting around me. I could move. I was... alive?

My eyes snapped open. I was back in the simulation room! I looked around and everyone was out of their glass boxes. They must have all woken up before me, and now they were all running around the room giving each other hugs and crying tears of joy. Sollux was crying on Aradia's shoulder, Dave and Karkat were just talking to each other but with obvious "no homo" smiles and standing a lot closer than they would to other people, and Kanaya and Rose were standing practically in the center of the group and kissing. _Way to be subtle you two_.

Suddenly Roxy ran over to me and I hesitantly pushed open the door on the glass box. All my physical pain was gone, but I was still shaking and feeling the immense panic from having nearly _died_.

"Dirky, you did it!" she squealed, pulling me into a tight hug the second I stepped out.

"Yeah, I guess I did," I smiled, finally feeling the pride of having succeeded.

She finally let go of me and her smile quickly turned into a concerned pout. "What happened in there?!" she asked, "We saw your light turn green in the last couple minutes!"

"Yeah, that…" I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly feeling bad about how much everyone must have been panicking when they saw that I was infected. "When we were saving Dave, Jane said she would distract him but she ended up almost getting bitten, so I pushed her out of the way, and… yeah."

"Oh my god! Are you hurt?!"

"Not anymore, but… yeah I almost died again and it hurt like hell."

"Why would you even do that?!"

"If I hadn't, she definitely would have gotten bitten and we might have missed the end of the simulation by half a second."

She looked like she was in silent shock. "Sorry…" I said quietly.

"Sorry?! You almost gave us all heart attack! Jake was crying!" she said. That didn't do much to distract from my guilt needless to say. I knew it wasn't _my_ fault that they were worried about me sacrificing myself to save Jane, but I still felt reasonably bad about it.

"Jake cried?"

"Of course he cried, you're his boyfriend, you idiot! Or at least you _were_ … what happened with you two anyway?"

"Let's just say I was being stupid and I did something I shouldn't have done."

She was clearly very confused, but I wasn't going to get into any more detail about it. "Where is he anyway?" I asked.

She looked around the room. "He was with Jane just a second ago… where'd he go?"

While she scanned the crowd of reuniting friends to find him, I glanced at the other side of the room to see Jake slowly trying to hide in the corner; except it was a circular room so there was no corner to hide in.

 _Oh no_. The moment he saw me looking at him he froze. I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I was still mad at him. Now that I had figured out how much of an idiot I was being before, his hurt expression made me feel even worse. I cursed my past self for doing this to him. He probably felt so bad the past couple days while I was in the simulation. I made him think that _he_ did something wrong.

This wasn't going to be easy, but I had to at least try. He might never forgive me. I don't think _I_ would have forgiven myself. But even if we weren't going to be together anymore, I couldn't leave him thinking it was his fault.

While Roxy's back was turned I slipped away from the crowd and followed him to the back of the room where nobody could see us behind a big column in the center of the room. Lucky for me, he didn't try to hide from me again.

"Jake."

He looked up at me like he was scared of me. That expression clouding over his wide eyes shot me in the heart and left what felt like an unfillable gap that gave me nearly physical pain. _I_ did this to him. That look told me there was no way he would forgive me.

"Hey," he said softly, then quickly realized he was staring at me and looked nervously at the floor. The hole in my heart ripped open even further.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He didn't say anything, but he looked back up at me. I wanted to look away from his eyes so this wouldn't hurt as much, but I knew it wouldn't be the same if I did.

"I… I didn't mean anything I said earlier. I was still feeling like everything was my fault even though you told me it wasn't, and then when Dave died I just… I just snapped I guess."

The look in his eyes thankfully softened a little, and he was clearly listening intently to what I had to say.

"I was never mad at you, I just thought that if you kept wanting to be with me I would end up hurting you, so I… I decided it would be better to give you a reason to hate me. But it hurt me too, and now… now I just can't believe I did that to you."

I couldn't really tell how he was taking this. He looked like he felt bad for me, but that didn't necessarily mean he was ready to forgive me.

"I'm fine now though, I promise. I- I understand that none of this happened because of me. The only thing I'm blaming myself for now is what happened earlier, but I _know_ that was my fault and I actually have a right to feel bad about it. I swear I'm not going to keep acting like I was before. I was being a complete idiot, I…"

He still didn't say anything. I knew I should have given up at this point, but now that I had started telling him all this I couldn't stop.

"I just… I wanted you to be safe… because… because I love you."

 _Dirk. Shut. Up._

"I love you and I just wanted what's best for you, but I didn't know what the best for you actually was and I ended up hurting you more than I thought I would have."

His eyes widened again. He must have been as surprised as I was to hear me finally admit that I loved him. In that moment I knew I had completely messed up.

"I'm sorry, Jake, I- I'm not expecting you to forgive me, I just… I just wanted you to know it wasn't your fault."

I didn't know what else to say. I don't think there was anything else I _could_ have said. I just stood there awkwardly waiting for him to say something. He looked like he was trying to figure out what to think, or he couldn't figure out how to put his thoughts into words. He just stood there with his mouth partially open to speak, his eyes glancing back and forth from my eyes to my lips. _Please English, for the love of god just say something_.

But he didn't say anything. I knew it. Of course he had nothing to say to me after the way I treated him. My heart was completely shattered, and then something happened that I never would have expected in a million years.

I took a step backwards to leave, but suddenly he grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and pulled me towards him. Before I could process what was going on, his lips were on top of mine.

 _What's going on?!_ I panicked for a moment before it hit me. _Holy crap, he's kissing me_.

I was frozen in disbelief. He actually forgave me. After everything I had done. He still loved me, and he had loved me the whole time. When I was being an idiot and making stupid decisions, he loved me. When I was lost in the bottomless pit of my self-hatred, he loved me. Even when I pushed him away because I was blinded by my dangerous insecurities, he still loved me. And now he knew for sure that I loved him too. And now he was _kissing_ me.

Once the initial shock faded, I kissed him back. He let go of my collar and put his arms around my neck. I wrapped mine around his waist and pulled him closer. I was finally feeling what I had thought I would never get to feel again, and I never wanted to let that feeling go. My heart was pounding from the anxiety of having that conversation and from the pure happiness that he always gave me. I could feel his heart pounding against mine too, and it made me even happier to fully realize that it meant he felt the same way about me as I felt about him.

I started crying. I cried tears of joy from the idea that this was it; the torture of the simulation was over and I had finally realized that I wasn't actually the complete mess I thought I was. I cried from the relief of seeing that Jake had actually forgiven me for the mental breakdown I was sure would ruin our relationship forever. I cried in mourning of all the friends and all the sanity I had lost along the way. But most of all I cried for Jake. He had to go through so much throughout all of this, and he probably experienced some of the same horrible feelings I had already gotten used to. He couldn't have been ready for any of it, and some of it was my fault. I was so sorry for putting my own personal problems before his, but I was also proud of him for having staying the same cheerful, optimistic person he always was for most of the journey.

It was over. None of us had really kept track of the time, but it felt like years since we had first woken up in that research building, and now it was all over. We made it through the hordes of zombies, the tragic losses, and all the distress that went along with it, and we made it out of the simulation. We even managed to go back in and save everyone that died along the way. We did it. We _beat_ the simulation. It was sort of a bittersweet ending now that I thought about it. We had to go through all that trauma, but in the end it brought the two of us to this moment, finally together, kissing and in love with a newfound certainty we knew we would never let go of. How could I not cry?

I realized he was crying too when we finally pulled away from each other, beaming through tears and still holding on to each other because we never wanted to let go. "I love you too," he said, laughing a little as he finally smiled up at me with that familiar adorable grin I could never get enough of.

All I could do was smile back at him, until I saw his face cloud over with a look that was just barely noticeable. Something was wrong. I felt my heart sink a little until I realized what he was looking at. He was looking at my eyes. Or at least, he was trying to. I always thought he was able to somehow see through my shades just enough to be capable of looking me directly in the eyes, even though I wasn't sure how. But I guess even if that was true, he probably wanted to see what my eyes actually looked like. How could we try to be completely open with each other if he didn't even know _that_?

I hesitated. After seeing the color of Dave's eyes, I felt much better about my own, but for some reason it still felt wrong to show them. It was like there was some kind of unspoken rule that I couldn't take off my shades. It was a secret. It was probably the last thing I had left that I could control in my life. _But this is Jake_ , I told myself. He always saw the best in me; there was no way anything bad could come from him knowing. I had to trust him _completely_ , even if that meant giving up my last big secret.

Slowly I reached up to my shades. My hand lingered on the side of them for a moment before I finally found the courage to pull them off my face and fold them up, clipping them onto the collar of my t-shirt before placing my hand back on Jake's waist.

The urge to hide my face was tugging at me, but I was distracted from the thought by the realization that now I could see Jake differently. My shades always darkened my vision like they were supposed to, and now that they were off everything was a million times brighter. Including Jake's eyes. The vibrant shades of emerald green danced across his irises, pulling in all the light from around us and shining in a way I couldn't see before. The array of colors glimmered in the reflection of his tears, forbidding me from looking away. They were absolutely fascinating, and I knew that if I stared into them any longer I would get lost.

Jake's eyes widened again, the slightly disappointed look on his face now completely transformed into one of absolute and unfaltering captivation.

"Your eyes…" he whispered.

I had never felt more vulnerable. After a lifetime of hiding behind my shades, I never had to keep a tight grip on the emotion I showed in my eyes, so I didn't know how. In that moment it felt like he could see right through me. He was looking right through my eyes into my soul, and now he would know everything about me. Not only that, but he actually knew the color of my eyes now. I didn't think he would actually break up with me or anything because of it, but he would definitely think it was weird.

I held my breath waiting for him to say something, but apparently even the fear he could probably see wasn't enough to distract him from the curse of my genetic abnormality. He was completely oblivious to how I was feeling. He just kept staring into my eyes like they were the eighth wonder of the world. Part of me wanted him to stop, but part of me wanted him to keep looking at me like that forever.

"They're…"

 _I know. I know it's weird and I know this was a mistake. Just please don't hate me_ , I wanted to beg, even though I wasn't sure why I thought something like that would ever change anything. I guess thinking he wouldn't want to be with me if he knew the truth was just a permanent insecurity that I had dwelled on for so long that I wouldn't be able to get rid of it.

"They're gorgeous."

 _Ok, that was cheesy. But so is Jake. He's cheesy, and beautiful, and- oh my god he just said that. He just_ actually _said that._

I couldn't believe this. It felt like a dream, but it wasn't. Jake really loved me. I was really happy. We were really together. This was _real_.

I couldn't stop the tears anymore. They came back in a wave of bittersweet relief and happiness, and I pulled him into a hug to hide them, although he must have been able to hear me crying on his shoulder. He only pulled me tighter with sobs of his own that I wondered if I was helping him control.

"Are you okay?" he choked.

"Yeah," I said, but I still held him for both the reassurance that he was really there and the simple reason that I needed him to make me feel better.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah,"

And it was true. Everything was fine. Finally, I could believe that without hesitation. I was alive. Everyone else was alive. I had drained the river of hatred I was constantly feeling for myself, and I could finally focus on being happy. I was with Jake, and I knew he loved me. The real me. I had finally told him I loved him too. Everything was fixed. All that was left was to let him know it.

"I'm okay."

 **END**

 **A/N: Oh my gog it's over. I'm both extremely sad and very proud of myself. Thank you** ** _so so so_** **much to everyone who stuck with this until the end, it honestly means so much to me and you're the best. Also I'm sorry for messing with your feels like that. I'm working on another DirkJake fic, but that's a long way from done and I have no clue when that'll be ready. I have a really sad oneshot saved, so maybe I'll post that eventually. Well, that's it I guess. Thanks for reading! Bye! *starts crying***


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